@TheOtherMaven

And that linked to a related article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/18/air-canada-apologises-bump...

Air Canada apologises for bumping boy, 10, from family holiday flight

Airline says it has offered ‘very generous compensation’ after Cole Doyle was not able to join the rest of his family on the plane to Costa Rica

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Air Canada has apologised to a Canadian family and offered “very generous compensation” after the airline bumped a 10-year-old boy from a flight.

The boy’s father, Brett Doyle, booked four tickets from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to Costa Rica for his family last August.

A day before the holiday in March this year Doyle says he checked in his family for the flight online, but could not select a seat for his son, Cole.

After hours on the phone with Air Canada, Doyle’s wife, Shanna, drove to the airport and was told the flight was oversold and their son had been bumped.

According to the broadcaster CBC, she asked an Air Canada agent if she or another adult they were travelling with could give up their seat for Cole.

“I was told that while yes, we could give up our seat, there would be no guarantee that the seat would go to my son,” she said. It could be given to a more frequent flyer, she was told.

The family, from Stratford on Prince Edward Island, instead drove two hours to Moncton airport in New Brunswick to catch a different flight to meet the Costa Rica flight in Montreal. However, that flight was cancelled, and they were forced to drive another two-and-a-half hours to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and stay overnight in a hotel.

An Air Canada spokeswoman, Isabelle Arthur, told the Vancouver Sun by email on Monday: “We are currently following up to understand what went wrong and have apologised to Mr Doyle and his family as well as offered a very generous compensation to the family for their inconvenience.”

The family, who eventually reached Costa Rica, were offered a C$2,500 voucher (US$1,876, £1,495), which expires in one year, and were told Air Canada may cover their expenses. ....

'Generous compensation' MAY cover their expenses? Looking at this, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if people generally would have refused to fly at all as soon as the evident public conditioning process added in the groping/irradiating of customers supposedly for customer security reasons, (nobody gets to harm you except us?) without these processes ever catching any simulated attempts made in a number of tests conducted of its efficacy...

Its shitty policies first came to public notice nine years ago now, when they broke Dave Carroll's $3500 Taylor guitar and refused to reimburse him for it. (Never offend a songwriter - they can and will mercilessly mock you in songs until you cry uncle!)

Background level complaints continued, and got worse, once United ate up Continental and degraded its level of service.

Last month there was the "leggings" controversy, when two teenage girls flying on United employee passes were denied boarding because the leggings were against company policy (which supposedly applied to the girls because of the passes).

Late last week it came to light that even some first-class passengers are more equal than others - one Geoff Fearns reported that after having paid full first-class round trip fare to/from Hawaii, and already seated for his return trip, he was "asked", and then ordered, to surrender his seat for another first-class passenger who had "higher priority". According to Fearns, he was threatened with handcuffs and forcible dragging off the plane if he did not comply. However, a "compromise" was arranged by a United employee who downgraded his ticket to economy and seated him between a bickering couple who did not want to sit together (and who continued to argue with each other all the way from Hawaii to LA). Once he was safely disembarked, he consulted a lawyer, and asked for a full refund plus a $25,000 contribution to a charity of his choice. United (allegedly) told him to get stuffed.

That happened before the brutalizing of Dr. Dao, but was reported after it.

And then there was the scorpion that dropped out of an overhead compartment and stung a passenger - well, I suppose there was no foreseeing that one, but the rest....