True culprit of the infamous United bumping: Airport Culture
Apr 11, 2017, 6:43 AM | Updated: 8:33 am
By now you’ve seen the video of the United Airlines passenger who was dragged from an overbooked flight at O’Hare.
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I have to say, I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone decided not to take the money. Now we know.
And travel experts are baffled.
“Why didn’t the agent offer even more money to get people off the plane?” said travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt. “Everybody has their price.”
Except veteran travelers know that game. They’ll hold out for at least the price of a First Class ticket, which could be $3,000.
So, maybe the gate agent was tired of having to cave into that kind of blackmail and decided to take a stand.
That’s one explanation. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was Airport Culture.
Chicago O’Hare, like every airport, is basically a police state. They check your ID, they go rifling through your stuff, you submit to genital touching. If they say “belt off, shoes on” you do it. If they say “belt on, shoes off” you do it. “Arms up,” “feet apart” – it’s like what happens to you across town if you drive with a broken taillight.
An airport may look like a cheerful shopping mall, but it’s a community floating on fear. And for employees whose nightmare is the one time they let the wrong person on a plane, an angry passenger is a dangerous passenger. End of discussion.
One bright spot is that thanks to social media, I’m pretty sure the going price for voluntary de-boarding just went way up.
But in the long run, Airport Culture will win, and most of us will follow orders because it’s still a scary world. And in a scary world we heed the orders of Col. Jessup: “We follow orders or people die. It’s that simple. Are we clear?”
Yes sir.
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