Overbooked flights suck. I stopped flying United years ago now because I go tired of being bumped. They cost my employer seriously wasted money due to conferences I was a day late to on two occasions. One instance they just took my flight off the board as underbooked that day. Had they done it even a day earlier I could have worked with them to make sure I got there on time, but they needed to leave me on the hook to avoid me asking for a full refund since they flew me most of my itinerary before stranding me. The other situation they decided to fly a smaller aircraft knocking me off that flight.
But frankly, this sort of thing is part of the general unrest in the electorate today. I have listened to business analysts discussing this issue all day all arguing that overbooking flights are sound business practice. I am not seeing many politicians chiming in either; I see a hearing has been called for but not much furor other than from the public. This is just considered normal business practice now. Routine.
This should not be accepted as routine.
This situation is an example of the failing of an unfettered "free-market" economy. Business interests become the primary driver; customers end up screwed. We end up with less and less competition leading to higher and higher costs and ever worsening service. We all know this is true in the airline business, but it is also true in cable television services and other old service industries. I mean just calling Comcast is a rage inducing experience for even the most Zen among us.
We should be using this United Airlines debacle as an example of the failure of the deregulatory zeal that gripped both parties since the Reagan Revolution. All it has led to is the "state" being used to deprive consumers of their rightfully purchased services. The fact that the police department is used to drag a paying customer down the aisle to protect the interests of the corporation is the biggest problem in this incident and gets almost no comment from anyone. It has become the buried headline in this situation.
The police were used to punish passengers for the corporation's bad behavior.
Think about that.
We, as a Democratic party, must own up to our role in creating this environment. The Obama administration did nothing to bust growing trusts in any industry sector. They approved merger after merger and support policies that enable this corporation to make use of the police force WE PAY FOR to do nothing beyond protecting the corporate interests and depriving their consumer of the services they rightfully purchased.
Aside from the police force being used to do nothing more than protecting corporate profits (rather than what their role ought to be, protecting public safety) industry after industry is getting more expensive, while products are more cheaply made, and atrociously worse and worse service becomes the norm. On top of that, wages have been stagnant in this era of deregulation of corporations as well, so what wage increases there are do nothing but keep up with inflation.
The hilarious bit is while typing this thing up a commentator points out that United employs 82,000 people so we shouldn't be too hard on them! To me, that sort of mindset is basically hostage taking. It is not surprising people across the country are upset with our civic society in general.
This United Airline situation serves as a sort of parable of the nature of the citizenries relationship to corporations, the state and the existing political elites that have empowered the business interests in such a massive way these last four decades. That corporate empowerment has led to unrest in the electorate, unrest we must strive to understand if we want to move forward with more support.