14 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

Interesting question - I don't think we know the answer.  At no point does the flight crew turn up in the videos.  It's not clear they were fully aware of what was going on.

But they should have been.

Well since it seems the Captain didn't get involved, maybe we can assume that it wasn't his/her responsibility. 

I think the flight crews role will not be made public at this point. My thoughts is since this passengers removal was coming from the Gate Attendants that were trying to accommodate the four crew to be ferried, the Captain probably was not involved at all. This will come out in the courts of course.

The PIC always has the final say!

1 hour ago, ytzpilot said:

I think the flight crews role will not be made public at this point. My thoughts is since this passengers removal was coming from the Gate Attendants that were trying to accommodate the four crew to be ferried, the Captain probably was not involved at all. This will come out in the courts of course.

This will never come out in the courts because United will settle out of court with a gag order in place. To take Dao to court is the 'Kobayashi Maru' (no win scenario for you non Star Trek fans). 

I think its quite amusing that people do not "believe" the absolute authority of the PIC.

Again it relates to this in that it "was" mishandled on several levels on both sides of the fence.

First Doctor thinks he can behave anyway he likes on an aircraft simply "because he has a ticket" and its apparant numerius people here do as well.

Mmmm no you cannot you as a passenger have a legal obligation to obey the law whether its the CAR's FAR's or whatever statutory legal authority its under. ALL countries as signatories to ICAO have them they ALL preserve the authority of the Pilot In Command.

United obviously they mishandled it on several levels but the one part that was not was the need to offload it was the process.

Airlines need the ability to move crew around at VERY short notice end of story.

Now that may upset some above who live in a perfect world where the weather is always good and aeroplanes are never ATC delayed, never break down and have no idea about crew duty hours.

In short if paxing crew dont fly hundreds and hundreds of people get heavily delayed or cancelled to following days.

If you think airlines dont "need" to pax ie deadhead crew think again you are wrong  on many many levels.

Lastly and ill put the scenario in a following post offloading pax doesnt just happen for paxing crew.

 

Yup. The pilots will almost certainly already have been told to STFU, but the point is, if someone is going to argue the reality of a PIC stepping in, then it is less about flight safety and more about passenger safety at that point, so if they were to have got involved, then screw all that safety of the flight ######, when the thing it still on the deck with doors on manual and only the APU running, if even that, then their resposibiity is still to the safety of all passengers, not cherry picking  some bogus flight safety ######, or going for some trite 'needs of the many' bollocks as though it's some dire 'the wings are falling off' situation, therefore 'obey me' bollocks. That's irrelevant as an argument in terms of where responsibility lies. The ensuing event was feck all to do with the safety of the aircraft, it was purely about the safety of the passengers. That was where their responsibility would have lain, if they even got involved in it, which I doubt.

17 minutes ago, DEHowie said:

Mmmm no you cannot you as a passenger have a legal obligation to obey the law whether its the CAR's FAR's or whatever statutory legal authority its under. ALL countries as signatories to ICAO have them they ALL preserve the authority of the Pilot In Command.

But ICAO doesn't give the pilot in command the authority that you think it does.

Read this:

Quote

The strict legal definition of PIC may vary slightly from country to country. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, definition is: "The pilot responsible for the operation and safety of the aircraft during flight time."[1] Flight time for airplanes is defined by the U.S. FAA as "Pilot time that commences when an aircraft moves under its own power for the purpose of flight and ends when the aircraft comes to rest after landing."[2] This would normally include taxiing, which involves the ground operation to and from the runway, as long as the taxiing is carried out with the intention of flying the aircraft.

The boldface emphasis is mine.  The captain's authority, like the authority of the captain of a seagoing vessel, is limited to the time when the vessel is operating - that is, sealed up, sealed off, and with no other authority present.  It's an expedient.

United 3411 wasn't in flight time.  It was at the gate, operating not according to pilot in command authority, but according to the laws of Chicago.

And if you read the article I linked to above - the one by the police officer - you'll find that the considered opinion of law enforcement is that no crime had been committed.  In the local jurisdiction - the one that applies - this was a business dispute.

And since the aircraft wasn't in flight time, and the passenger was sitting quietly in his seat, there was no cause for any authority to intervene, other than for commercial reasons.

It's not that we don't "believe" in the authority of the pilot in command.  We're arguing that it doesn't apply at all times and in all circumstances - and it doesn't apply in this case.

It's also moot, because there's no evidence that pilot in command authority had anything to do with this.  As far as we can tell, Dr. Dao was removed by gate agents with the assistance of security personnel.  

Now now... let's not introduce facts in the face of Mr. Howie's absolute authority.  Tsk, tsk!  Ok.. that's stirring the pot a tad... and I shouldn't... but...

 

The legal situation does not support PIC authority at the time of the incident.  It simply doesn't and any pilot who thinks they have absolute authority while sitting at the gate may very well find they make even less money afterwards.  A great deal less.

Scenario time.

This is a real life scenario that have happened to me in my career as examples of offloads in "real world" and rather than criticize, before i answer how they where handled put down how you would handle them. We see plently of people sticking up for the rights of Dr Dao so lets see how you could make "it work" in real world example.

Scenario 1,

You are sitting at the gate half boarded for a semi transcontinental flight back to your home base. Second sector of a 2 sector 7 fying hour day in a 190 seat narrow body jet.

An ACARS arrives with a new forecast for your destination. Fog is on the destination now from just prior to your arrival till late tomorrow morning. ALL of your company Alternates(in airlines you cant just plan to divert anywhere) also have fog in that region. So the "nearest" Alternate is 2 hours flying away.

As its the end of holiday season the aircraft is full with pax and bags loaded to almost maximum zero fuel weight 62500 KG.

Your fuel to dest is some 8000Kg. Fuel to Alternate 4600Kg.

With all reserves and alternste fuel the aircraft now needs to carry just over 15200 kg. It has a maximum take off weight of 77 tonnes.

So zero fuel is 62.5 plus 15200 legal minimum fuel comes in at 77.7 tonnes so we are overloaded by 700 kg. 

Thats only part of the problem. If we burn 8000 going to our destination and the fog isnt there we will arrive at 77000(max take off weight) minus flight burn 8000 so 69000KG which happens to be 3000Kg over our maximum landing weight.

Legally we have to carry the fuel there is NO WAY you can touch it. Now that will have you arrive into a single runway airport with good weather but only 30 minutes of fuel remaining. Not much at after 4 hours at least two possible missed approaches then a long diversion. 

So being even on a ball busting minimum fuel scenario ending at a single runway airport with possibly numerous diversions would you go with the above fuel? Remember every Kg extra you carry means less payload can be carried.

Now we have a problem with 15200Kg fuel we are 800Kg over maximum take off weight and 3000Kg above max landing weight. In short we need to offload 3000Kg of payload ie passengers/bags so we can legally land. An Average pax is 84kg average and you are full carrying 186 passengees an average bag is 14 you are carrying 120 of them.

So your now the Captain let me know what you would do so the flight departs. You cant offload fuel, you can offload passengers and bags but given all that has been said how and who?

Oh we do a PA and we have 10 volunteers to stay so call it 1000kg off of the 3000 we need. We still need to lose another 2000kg

No more volunteers can be found its options time how would you deal with it?

Who goes who stays and then how are you getting those off who need to be offloaded..remember Dr Dao is watching...

1 hour ago, WarpD said:

Now now... let's not introduce facts in the face of Mr. Howie's absolute authority.  Tsk, tsk!  Ok.. that's stirring the pot a tad... and I shouldn't... but...

 

The legal situation does not support PIC authority at the time of the incident.  It simply doesn't and any pilot who thinks they have absolute authority while sitting at the gate may very well find they make even less money afterwards.  A great deal less.

From the moment the PIC steps into the aircraft he takes full legal responsibility for all passengers and crew on "that aircraft".

What you are implying is that if we are half boarded and the APU catches fire that there is nobody in a position of legal responsibility because the aircraft has not left the gate?

We arrive at the gate and have a tailpipe fire on shutdown(happens one in 10000 shutdowns).

Maybe we arrive on the gate park the brake and we have a brake fire.

So i can simply get up and walk off absolved of all responsibility because its judged in your eyes by a relationship with a ship because we are not underway..Lol i cant "order" yes "order" its not a request an evacuation because the fire goes out of control?

Ships and planes there a little different.

As the Pilot in command you are legally responsible for the safety of all passengers and crew. The "flight" legally commences at the arrival of the crew at the "aircraft" and ceases at flight completion ie last pax off or multi sector last crew member off.

Alan, you are missing the concept. ICAO writes regulations which as a signatory each country is legally obligated to follow.

The individual countries turn the ICAO regs in there many forms into "laws" with there own countries spin on them. IE the definition of PIC and responsibilities are Written into law by each country.

An individual regulator can make changes ie enhance or alter to individual regs to enhance safety ie making them stronger not weaker.

Every country as a signatory to ICAO is legally obligated to uphold ALL the regs and implications there of in addition to having there own laws ie FAR's and CAR's etc mist of which are based on the regs.

 

Darren -

Your scenario 1 doesn't apply.  What you've described is a) an act of god (change in weather at the destination and alternates) and b) a safety of flight issue (weight and fuel).  In United 3411, neither of those is in play.  There's a commercial need (to reposition crew) for which alternatives exist (charter an aircraft to transport them; delay or cancel the a.m. Louisville flight and rebook those passengers onto other carriers).  No safety issue exists.  It's a commercial matter.

In scenario 1, if I'm your airline's chief reputation officer (yes, such things exist), here's my advice: Increase the compensation beyond the company limit to get additional volunteers.  Explain the situation clearly and calmly to get additional volunteers.  If someone is belligerent or resistant, bypass that person and move on to another candidate.  Yes, your flight will be delayed.  There are other interests than keeping the schedule.  My job is to point that out.

Here's section 21 of United's contract of carriage. I'm hard pressed to find Dr. Dao represented in it.  Perhaps you can point me to the relevant sections.

About pilot in command - here's how the FAA interprets the ICAO regs:
 

Quote

 

Under U.S. FAA FAR 91.3, "Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command", the FAA declares:[4]

a. The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.

b. In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

c. Each pilot in command who deviates from a rule under paragraph (b) of this section shall, upon the request of the Administrator, send a written report of that deviation to the Administrator.

U.S. FAA FAR 121.533(e) gives broad and complete final authority to airline captains: "Each pilot in command has full control and authority in the operation of the aircraft, without limitation, over other crewmembers and their duties during flight time, whether or not he holds valid certificates authorizing him to perform the duties of those crewmembers."[5]

 

Focus is on the operation of the aircraft.  The definition of "flight time" in my post above is the FAA's definition.

But again, I'm hard-pressed to see how the captain's legal authority applies in the case of United 3411, since there's no evidence the captain exercised any authority or participated in any way.  The only participants we know of right now are the gate agents, the cabin crew and the Chicago Aviation Department security personnel.

By the way, these discussions about the scope of pilot in command authority are pretty interesting.  This is how legal precedent gets established in the courts - people go to court and argue about definitions and language, the way we're doing here.  People like to complain about lawyers and about decisions turning on "technicalities," but this is actually how the system works.  We debate about words because words matter.

On a different note - my new copy of Aviation Week (April 17-30) arrived today, with a commentary and an editorial about United.  They're pretty scathing.  I can't link to them since they're behind a paywall, but I can quote a little under fair use terms, just to give the flavor.  Interestingly, they do think the captain "can, within certain limits, decree removal" (clearly I'd like to debate that with them).  But the commentary goes on to say:
 

Quote

Employees must be trained and empowered to make common-sense decisions - even if they go against day-to-day company procedures.  The passenger involved was clearly very keen to get to his destination and by all appearances was not a safety threat.  He was unfamiliar with airline denied-boarding procedures and operational requirements.  Airlines must realize that they should never forcibly remove a customer to accommodate employees who need to get to the same destination.

Emphasis mine, again.

This is from the editorial:
 

Quote

 

Whatever happened to "flying the friendly skies"?  In the age of social media, it did not take long for a disturbing video of airport police dragging a passenger from a United Express jet in Chicago to go viral globally.  A suspected terrorist?  Wanted criminal?  Disruptive drunk? No, this 69-year-old man's "crime" was that he refused to yield his paid-for seat on a Sunday evening so the airline could get a deadheading crew to Lousiville.

...

Legally, the airline was within its rights to ask a passenger to leave an aircraft... but the heavy-handed act of ordering four passengers to deboard Flight 3411 after offers of $800 vouchers failed to elicit volunteers, and the crew's decision to call security personnel to drag off one of them when he refused, struck a nerve with the flying public.  It also cast a light on United's processes, which clearly lacked options for employees to resolve a company-created crew scheduling issue.

United wisely is conducting a top-to-bottom review of this systematic failure... and the organizational issues of crew scheduling, contingency planning and crisis communications.

Our advice: Find and acknowledge the failures and rewrite the United rulebook.  It will cost the airline a lot less than a repeat of this debacle.

 

Yet again, the emphasis is mine.

And again, I'll be interested to see how readers respond on the legalities.

The main point, though, is that Aviation Week isn't really known for its radicalism or its anti-industry stance.

United really is standing alone on this one.

 

2 hours ago, DEHowie said:

From the moment the PIC steps into the aircraft he takes full legal responsibility for all passengers and crew on "that aircraft".

What you are implying is that if we are half boarded and the APU catches fire that there is nobody in a position of legal responsibility because the aircraft has not left the gate?

We arrive at the gate and have a tailpipe fire on shutdown(happens one in 10000 shutdowns).

Maybe we arrive on the gate park the brake and we have a brake fire.

So i can simply get up and walk off absolved of all responsibility because its judged in your eyes by a relationship with a ship because we are not underway..Lol i cant "order" yes "order" its not a request an evacuation because the fire goes out of control?

Ships and planes there a little different.

As the Pilot in command you are legally responsible for the safety of all passengers and crew. The "flight" legally commences at the arrival of the crew at the "aircraft" and ceases at flight completion ie last pax off or multi sector last crew member off.

Alan, you are missing the concept. ICAO writes regulations which as a signatory each country is legally obligated to follow.

The individual countries turn the ICAO regs in there many forms into "laws" with there own countries spin on them. IE the definition of PIC and responsibilities are Written into law by each country.

An individual regulator can make changes ie enhance or alter to individual regs to enhance safety ie making them stronger not weaker.

Every country as a signatory to ICAO is legally obligated to uphold ALL the regs and implications there of in addition to having there own laws ie FAR's and CAR's etc mist of which are based on the regs.

 

You have made many valid points about the authority of the PIC in this (and previous posts) relating to situations like an overloaded aircraft etc. 

But in THIS particular incident, the PIC was not involved. By all reports the PIC was never in the cabin - was never seen at any point - and it has been firmly established in multiple reports from multiple sources that the actions relating to the removal of Dr. Dao were directed by the gate agents. The pilot in command was NOT the person who instructed Dao to vacate his seat, and was NOT the person who called in airport security agents to forcibly remove him.

United CEO Oscar Muñoz himself has admitted that the airline did NOT in fact, have a legally justifiable reason to involuntarily deplane Dr. Dao (or any other passenger) from a non-overbooked aircraft solely to free up seats for deadheading flight crew.

It was perfectly reasonable for United to attempt to entice passengers to voluntarily deplane by offering vouchers and/or cash rewards - BUT if they could find no takers, that should have been the end of it.

The PIC's  command authority had absolutely nothing to do with this particular incident. In fact, had he put in an appearance and asserted his authority before the faux "police" came aboard, the incident might have had a very different outcome.

3 hours ago, Alan_A said:

But ICAO doesn't give the pilot in command the authority that you think it does.

Read this:

The boldface emphasis is mine.  The captain's authority, like the authority of the captain of a seagoing vessel, is limited to the time when the vessel is operating - that is, sealed up, sealed off, and with no other authority present.  It's an expedient.

United 3411 wasn't in flight time.  It was at the gate, operating not according to pilot in command authority, but according to the laws of Chicago.

And if you read the article I linked to above - the one by the police officer - you'll find that the considered opinion of law enforcement is that no crime had been committed.  In the local jurisdiction - the one that applies - this was a business dispute.

And since the aircraft wasn't in flight time, and the passenger was sitting quietly in his seat, there was no cause for any authority to intervene, other than for commercial reasons.

It's not that we don't "believe" in the authority of the pilot in command.  We're arguing that it doesn't apply at all times and in all circumstances - and it doesn't apply in this case.

It's also moot, because there's no evidence that pilot in command authority had anything to do with this.  As far as we can tell, Dr. Dao was removed by gate agents with the assistance of security personnel.  

It applies on the ground because the captain will be taking those people in the air. It's expected that an airplane will fly. Therefore, if there is a situation which may indicate that a problem could arise from said behavior when in the air, then it falls under the captain's authority.

 

With your logic, a captain has to sit on his hands knowing full well that a passengers behavior can be a safety issue and then wait util a problem has occurred in the air to have any authority whatsoever.

That's just reckless behavior. The best place to mitigate a problem is on the ground. Not in the air.

My question to you is this. Have you ever been the designated PIC of an actual airplane?

39 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

My question to you is this. Have you ever been the designated PIC of an actual airplane?

No.  My work, as I've explained, involves keeping businesses from doing self-destructive things.

I'm not questioning PIC authority.  I'm questioning whether it applies in this case - either in theory or in practice.  I'm also questioning whether it applies no matter what, to anyone and anything the PIC decides to deal with.

Who was the PIC of United 3411?  What actions did he or she take?  What safety issue was addressed?

Seems to me that the PIC question is a distraction from the real issues, which have to do with the airline's policies and procedures, and the behavior of the cabin crew and the gate agents.

1 hour ago, ahsmatt7 said:

It applies on the ground because the captain will be taking those people in the air. It's expected that an airplane will fly. Therefore, if there is a situation which may indicate that a problem could arise from said behavior when in the air, then it falls under the captain's authority.

 

With your logic, a captain has to sit on his hands knowing full well that a passengers behavior can be a safety issue and then wait util a problem has occurred in the air to have any authority whatsoever.

That's just reckless behavior. The best place to mitigate a problem is on the ground. Not in the air.

My question to you is this. Have you ever been the designated PIC of an actual airplane?

Somehow, you've equated a passenger's refusal to agree to an improper business decision as indication that he is a safety threat. As explained to you before, that is a false connection.  There is no logical way to connect not wanting to be ripped off with not following emergency evacuation instructions.

Again, the only question for the pic here is why wasn't he involved to stop a situation from getting out of hand?  Rhetorical question. As most of us would have been, he was likely ensconced in the cockpit mostly ignoring the situation because it was a gate agent driven business issue and not a passenger driven safety issue.

I have kicked people off my plane before. And all the times were for intoxication or refusal to comply with safety instructions only. My only involvement in seating of passengers were with regard to non revs and jumpsesters.  Otherwise, I have always left customer issues to the agent. Although after what happened to these guys, I will definitely monitor customer issues more closely from now on. As for the what if scenario with regard to a change in fuel load to accomodate a change in flightplan due to changing weather, causing a weight issue, that's easy. That would be a safety and legal issue. That is covered in the CoC and agents have legal right to unseat for that.  However, there are still other ways to get around an ugly situation by offloading bags or planning a tech stop.  They really don't have to force people off.