You were not kicked off for taking pictures. You were kicked off for acting odd.
Exactly. It's a long-haul flight, you might have a grudge against the flight attendant, you've already behaved slightly oddly - thinking it appropriate to say "I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist" is odd - and there are so many ways the flight could become a nightmare for all concerned, all thanks to you remaining on the plane.
Maybe the captain could have handled things better. At the same time, the author went off the plane calmly and without making a scene. The author's disappointment aside, it sounds like a success to me.
>The author's disappointment aside, it sounds like a success to me.
I can't imagine any criteria under which the handling of this situation could be considered a "success" and it scares me that individuals, not directly involved, could see it as such.
... a long time, major customer left pissed off. Nope, not seeing how it can be considered a success. With a reasonable flight attendant there's no reason to consider that there might have been a risk of anything but a calm flight in the first place, so having him leave calmly is not success.
I've never had anything but good experiences with United through a couple of hundred thousand miles of flights (London <=> SFO regularly for a few years - still got about 100k unused miles...).
But if this had happened to me, I wouldn't be flying United the next time.
My choice of United instead of British Airways or Virgin for that period was entirely down to Uniteds much better (for me) frequent flier program (LHR <=> SFO gave me upgrades to business around one leg out 3 or 4 or so on average, while BA and Virgin were impossibly stingy, though the quality of their business class was better), but that would not outweigh a risk of not getting on the plane.
United is not exactly in an economic situation where they can afford pissing off their best customers.
... a long time, major customer left pissed off. Nope, not seeing how it can be considered a success.
Not only that, but a customer who writes a travel blog which appears to be fairly widely read (judging just by the number of comments on the original blog post) and who clearly knows how to use social media to get his story out.
This whole thing is a huge black-eye for United from what I can see.
Really? To me at it sounded like he explicitly announced he was someone that United corporate feels the need to monitor. There are a number of valid ways to interpret that. If I walked on a plane and said "Hello! I'm someone the big wigs at United corporate monitors closely!", I'd expect to get tossed.
I'm getting very tired of blogger-entitlement-syndrome. "I'm important on the internet! Respect my authoritah!"
Exactly. It's a long-haul flight, you might have a grudge against the flight attendant, you've already behaved slightly oddly - thinking it appropriate to say "I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist" is odd - and there are so many ways the flight could become a nightmare for all concerned, all thanks to you remaining on the plane.
Maybe the captain could have handled things better. At the same time, the author went off the plane calmly and without making a scene. The author's disappointment aside, it sounds like a success to me.