"United Airlines Extraordinary Rendition"

Yves Smith says it so much better than me:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-removal-reporting-management-fail.html

But I will take my blog shot at this pathetic situation simply because it deserves a good thrashing:

Definition: Booking; an act of reserving accommodations, travel, etc. or of buying a ticket in advance.

Overbooking:  This requires so a low degree of logic that I think most can figure out an accurate definition.  Maybe like:  Booking more accommodations than there are accommodations.  In a leap of logic one might say......Booking something that the booker cannot deliver to a bookee.  Now that might be a fair business model if one is in the horse race betting business and is called a "bookie".

Urban dictionary: Top definition. bookie. A shady character that takes illegal bets on horse races, fights, sports games. 

There is so much use of the the terms "Overbooked", "Overbooking" in reference to the pathetic action of United Airlines recently.  However this is a fact free world now and few challenge it.  What does Overbooking mean anyhow?  Why, Alice, it means anything you want it to mean....of course!


It looks to me like every passenger finally seated in their seat on that infamous  United flight had a booking reservation for the seat they sat in and had held that booking for some variable amount of time prior to presenting that booking in the form of a ticket to board and take their booked seat.  The flight was full.  All seats were filled with passengers having been granted their accommodations.


Then 4 passengers had to be de-accommodated after the fact of being accommodated because....wait, wait,  change that to "Not Because"......Because: that is the point of this blog entry that has gone to far beyond obvious reasoning to the point of cynical ridicule.......which feels good.


Ah ha!  The Point!  4 passengers had to be de-accommodated:  and I will shout it for the first time I have ever used all caps in writing anything so it will be heard loud and clear:   NOT BECAUSE OF OVERBOOKING THE FLIGHT, ALL BOOKED SEATS HAD THE BOOKED SEATEE IN THE SEAT AND THERE WERE NO MORE BOOKING THAN THERE WERE SEATS.


The 4 employees were not "Booked" until after all passengers that were booked to assigned seats were in their assigned seats.  If this was a horse race they were all winners of the prior probability that they would occupy a seat and the flight would not be overbooked prior to boarding.


The United Airlines solution to the problem:


Move the overbooked goal post finish line.  A flight is not longer overbooked until the aircraft is past the point of no return on take off.  Untill then every passenger is betting on a horse race where they may or may not win with a seat bet on their booking to fly.


Looking at it from another point of view:  Can boarding be denied after the fact of boarding?  


The CEO of United is as skilled at giving new meaning to anything as Trump.  Perhaps he went to Trump U.  


We are in a fact free world.  The ones that define the facts rule us.  

The CEO of United was finally forced to come clean with the truth only because evidence of an obvious public lie stated by United and promulgated by the media was blatantly overwhelming:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/04/11/united-ceo-employees-followed-procedures-flier-belligerent/100317166/# 

Yves in her link at the beginning of this blog entry says it best here:

"Absence of reporting on airline regulations leads to widespread skewing of story in United’s favor. Even though most readers may think United is getting beaten up aplenty in the press, in fact it is getting a virtual free pass as far as its rights to remove a paying passenger with a confirmed seat who has been seated.¹ This seems to reflect the deep internalization in America of deference to authority in the post 9/11 world, as well as reporters who appear to be insufficiently inquisitive. And there also seems to be a widespread perception that because it’s United’s plane, it can do what it sees fit. In fact, airlines are regulated and United is also bound to honor its own agreements."

Yves conclusion:

"It’s bad enough when travelers suffer the indignity of disrupted plans, crowded planes, security theater and too often cranky airport staff. Now we’ve seen United execute a private sector extraordinary rendition. Perhaps this fiasco will lead to some improvements, but the lousy economics of airlines combined with their oligopoly status in the US says they will be extremely reluctant to make anything beyond bare minimum changes."

How I admire this woman's ability to say what she says so well!

"United execute a private sector extraordinary rendition"

A far better description of the situation than "de-accommodating" a passenger. 

My full and total admiration goes to Yves for coming so close to this phrase which when searched on Google return not hits but describes the entire situation exactly and elegantly:

"United Airlines Extraordinary Rendition"
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22United+airlines+extraordinary+rendition%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial 

The phrase may not exist as a Google search hit but I will bet that it will not be long before Colbert says it.