It’s been a bad week for United Airlines. And the latest mishaps for the airline are painful, literally and figuratively. Not only are they facing a litany of criticism because they hauled a passenger off one of their flights against his will, now they have a little “pest” problem.
FOX News had this story.
On Thursday, the airline confirmed to CNBC that a scorpion stung one of their passengers after falling from the aircraft’s overhead bin on a recent flight from Houston to Canada.
Richard Bell and his wife Linda, of Calgary, Canada, were flying home from Houston following a vacation in Mexico, when he claims the eight-legged creature landed on his head.
“It fell in my hair. I grabbed it. I was hanging onto it by its tail,” said Bell in an interview with GlobalNews.ca.
Yeah, and at this point, you’re wondering about the average intelligence of United Airlines passengers.
After a fellow passenger informed the couple that the scorpion might be poisonous, Bell removed the arthropod — which reportedly measured an inch and a half — and placed it on a plate. He then picked it up again, at which point Bell says he felt a sharp pain akin to “a wasp sting” on his finger.
Another passenger reportedly stomped on the critter before United employees disposed of it in an airplane toilet.
A spokesman for United claims that the crew took immediate action, and contacted a medical professional on the ground for assistance. Emergency personnel were also on-hand to meet with Bell upon his arrival in Calgary.
And in case you’ve been living in a fox-hole all week, here’s the recap of United’s previous catastrophe, this week.
Chicago/NBC has the story:
The Kentucky doctor dragged from a United Express flight at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago suffered a significant concussion, broken nose and lost his two front teeth, attorneys for David Dao said Thursday.
In revealing plans to file a lawsuit, Chicago aviation attorney Thomas A. Demetrio said the issue that led to David Dao’s “forceful” and “violent” removal was not in fact “overbooking” but rather a larger problem of airlines “bullying” customers.
“For a long time, airlines, United in particular, have bullied us,” he said. “They have treated us less than maybe we deserve.”
Dao’s lawyer criticized the flight’s crew for standing by idle as police used “violent” force to remove a 69-year-old man from the plane, noting that Dao was not a threat to passengers or United employees.
“This was not a troubled passenger,” he said. “This was not a nut job. This was not a threat to anyone. Should he have been unceremoniously dragged out of that airplane the way he was? He’s a 69-year-old man. Is that really the way we want to treat the aged?”
Image: Source
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