EasyJet wanted to fling me off flight for diss tweet, warns cyber-law buff

Fail

'In a statement, the airline said: “EasyJet has never denied boarding due to comments on social media."'

Then tell that to your boarding nazi at the gate.. Words are dead common and worthless, your actions are what counts: you've just hit an internet Fail zone.

What were the easyjet employeees doing on Twatter

Shouldn't they have been out front coping with a 90 minute late flight

And this modern thing of companies denying it afterwards is getting tiring, I bet someones looking at policy and someones been sent for training and some kind of memo has been sent out, I bet, I bet.

Hmm...

Criticising an airline on Twitter is one thing. This guy, despite his law credentials, should have realised that calling everyone to 'get into em' could be read as tantamount to inciting trouble, physical or otherwise.

It seems we have our first company fighting back in the nastiest way against internet criticism. I really, REALLY hope that this news goes further and that people censure this company for their behaviour.

Of course, the downside here is that people vote with their wallets, and people's votes are managed by the potential damage to their wallets, so EasyJet is likely to retain their customers regardless.

"It's called free speech"

Well then sir, here's your £8.70 back. Didn't you read the small print which says we don't legally have to carry you on our plane?

Typical, a lawyer trying to scare people to get what he wants.

EasyJet PR

"EasyJet has never denied boarding due to comments on social media".. written by the PR department....so it must be true

Maybe I missed it...

So did the soldier get on the flight? Make his connection for the ship? Get put on a different flight? That part seems to have been lost

A few years ago I said Moo to a Ryan-air bod (as we'd been steered like cattle)

and almost got stopped from flying.

That time the bod said I'd insulted Ryan-air and that "I am ryan-air"!

Never again - tail between my legs ...INAL ho ho

He flashed his badge

Internet Law Student, has all the cachet of an ISO9001 auditor.

He flashed his uni lecturer's badge, not something he likes to do, you know, on account of it being the highest symbol of authoritah in the land, and the crowds parted. Imagine the fawning if he'd been an internet barrister, or an internet judge, they might have bumped him to a window-seat.

Get back, you budget airline weasels, he's Mark Leiser, PhD student, and he has a smartphone and a twitter account and he's not afraid to use them.

Anonymous in case an internet law student flashes his badge and sics the internet plod on me.

The real moral of the story

Tweet away, be as rude to and about airlines as you like.

Just don't make the newby mistake of using an account with your real name. Surely everyone (everyone who uses twitter, or any other social media for that matter) has many, many accounts under different names, guises and personas (wot! it's against the rules? Oh no! what shall I do) so just use one of them, instead.

Be prepared.

Yeah right.

Here you have a publicity hungry law student claiming an airline tried to stop him boarding because of tweet and everybody believes him!

Whilst Easyjet are perfectly capable of refusing service for any number of reasons I'm sceptical of anybody who self-publicises to this extent. Lets have some verification from other passengers who saw the alleged incident.

What a tw@

Shame the airline did not in the end kick him off the plane.

Shows all the tell tale signs of being a cowardly SOB - "it's solely about meit's all about the valiant soldier!", "I'm a wannabe lawyerlecturer!", "I absolutely lovedon't like flashing my ID!".

They should have at least unloaded his bag for "security reasons"...

P.S. The ship was going to a war zone? Did I miss something, are we at war with a naval power? Is invasion of Spain imminent?

Oddly, airlines can work better than Easy Jet/Ryanair.

On internal flight to a provincial Nigerian airport. I was delighted to see how well things can go -- passengers waited in a lobby, man appears with a handcart full of luggage, passengers reclaim luggage, leave. Not all that different on a flight from Southampton to the Channel Islands.

All seemed to work, without the delay dramas, herding and bullying which are the main features of the endless Airport themed reality shows on TV. Never mind the ghastly website booking procedures, these shows have made me completely budget-airline-averse.

But

Is any of it true?

A business model that's the envy of other industries...

Treat your customers like shit, bully them around, and when they complain, throw them off the flight or have them arrested for some trumped-up "disruptive behavior".

The CEOs of corporations in other lines of business must be madly envious of the air travel industry.

How about if

I twatted praising Easyjet no end? WIll i get upgraded, window seating, free flight next time? A blow job enroute?

These cheap airlines are behaving Nazi-like these days. Thanks to Bin Laden (Actually Bush/Blair), all the airlines now have a god given right to refuse travel to paying customers on the slightest pretext whatsoever and are elgibile for their own interpretation of "threat". As for the US homeland security and TSA agents, Less said the better.

ABout time the travelling public use Social Media more than ever in criticising bad behaviour.

Tin foil hats all around, please.

Bad ol' Squeezyjet

First off, +1 for the Free Speech bit. Unless he's breaking any laws (in which case you should involve Plod) then he has every right to criticise as much as he wants.

My own experience with Squeezyjet was similarly crap. A family group including myself were checking in for a flight from Gatwick to Ireland for a funeral and rocked up to the check-in desk at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Me: "Good morning, we're on the "oh whatever it was" to Dublin this morning".

Squeezyjet Gimp:"Good morning sir, hmm, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you this morning" (wink,chortle)

Me: "Really, and just what might that be?" (starting to get annoyed)

SG:"Well sir, I'm sorry to have to tell you that not everybody will be able to get on the flight today!" (pause for effect, then laughs).

Me: (fixing him with a Paddington Bear stare): "I don't find that especially amusing, particularly as we're all travelling to a funeral today. Are you denying boarding to any of our group?"

SG : (looking suitably crestfallen): "No sir."

Me:"Good, then perhaps you'd like to give your pathetic attempt at humour a break and get on with what you're supposed to be doing which is checking us in for the flight, if that's not too much trouble?".

I didn't feel sorry for him at the time and I still don't. Some things just aren't funny and boy did he pick the wrong group of passengers to joke with about denying boarding .

Optional

"In a statement, the airline said: “EasyJet has never denied boarding due to comments on social media."

But, apparently, it has threatened to do so.

I do hope my parents don't meet a jobsworth when they go on their holiday in a couple of week's time. They're useless at this sort of thing, so routinely ask me to book flights for them and print the boarding passes.

I take exception to the annoying full-colour advertisment that takes up the bottom half of the boarding passes, so this time I took those out before printing, and replaced them with a piece of text saying something like "Annoying, toner-wasting adverts removed. Adverts can be printed in future for £10+VAT"

Delays

Too may of the above comments seem to miss the point. WTF has this got to do with delays????

I'm not usually paranoid but are these posters shills?

It is to do with someone posting something on twitter, which is legal and not defamatory, but only negative and then being threatening with being denied boarding. If true - and I trust the reg - then this is absolutely damming. Like giving a bad review to a film and then not being allowed to go to the cinema.

That is all.

fixed it for them

"the airline said: “EasyJet has never denied that we denied denying boarding due to comments on social media. On the rare occasion that we consider denying that we denied denying boarding it is on the basis of disruptive behaviour""

Alarm bells

1) We only have this person's side of the story

2) Most companies don't comment on individual complaints, as they have to gain the complainants permission before releasing that information

3) Any provider of goods or services has the right to refuse service to anyone being a dick. While a 90 minute delay might be annoying, they're under no obligation to do anything about that. Judging by the response of "we're not helping the Army guy", it sounds like a very exasperated employee retorting to someone who was being a bit of a plum, and shouting/ranting/tweeting

4) A threat of not offering to fly someone, that was reversed upon seeing their lawyer credentials? Who knew that law lecturers had such recognisable badges to flash about.

I'm smelling a large dose of bullshit, or at the very least a hastily rewritten version of history.

The first question in my mind: how is this possible?

Presumably it would require automated systems monitoring twitter. Oce a post is found it would need to be matched to an existing ( or future ) passenger. Then reviewed for content and forwarded to a local representative who would also need to review it prior to taking action. Potentially turning it over to local law enforcement.

All of this is predicated on the airlines ability to match the twits account to their passenger lists.

Assuming that's possible and reliable ( which I wouldn't ): it seems like the best way to screw someone over would be to open a twitter account in their name and post something properly defaming ( or hostile ) about the airline they are about to use.

The alternative ( and more likely ) explanation is that this isn't going on and the guy was simply a dick. At which point the counter agent called their manager over to resolve it.

Hmm...

Yeah, if this guy was being a twat, then I can see kicking him off.

Kicking him off over a tweet? Hell no (which ultimately they didn't, but they shouldn't have even threatened it to begin with if he just sent a tweet.) They probably can reject any flyer for any reason but they would have gotten a hell of a lot of bad PR (more than the bit they are getting now.)

Last train...

From The Independent...

"He asked an attendant at the gate when the last train from Gatwick airport into central London would depart"

Idiot!... a couple of minutes online with the National Rail Timetable or TheTrainline would have told him that trains run from Gatwick to London right through the night.

From Strathclyde University's PhD student profiles (http://www.strath.ac.uk/internetlaw/staffandassociates/currentphdstudents/)

"Mark's PhD research focuses on asking whether there are identifiable democratic values found across the global Internet community and are these compatible with the current democratic processes of individual States. The research encompasses appropriate areas of Internet governance and the role of democracy in the online world as well as public/private international Law, freedom of expression in cyberspace, IP, and human rights."

Can't help thinking he might have provoked all this so he's got something to write about in his thesis!

Cowboys

Anyone who flies with EasyJet or Ryan Air deserves all they get. These are cowboy airlines whose business model is to deny boarding and charge unexpected extras. If you want to go somewhere use a proper airline.

"on the basis of disruptive behaviour"

If an Easy Jet rep actually said that it's potentially libellous.

let down

I was invited to give a talk at a conference in Berlin. I was booked on a Lufthansa flight from Heathrow. I arrived at the airport on time - but Lufthansa told me the flight was full and to effectively 'do one'. Apparently, booking a ticket with Lufthansa is no guarantee of getting on the flight. No other flights available from any other airline to get me there in time. So I missed the talk. The organisers announced to the 1000 strong audience that Lufthansa had let them down and the audience should think carefully who they book flights with. Lufthansa - never again.

A bit of a non story

Plane delayed, person peeved.

They should try the train service provided by Greater Anglia.....

Easyjet are not Ryanair

I've flown with Easyjet a lot and, by and large, they're fine. The planes are fine, the people are fine and the process is ok. It's a short haul flight operator and that's what you get. I wouldn't choose to fly with them long distance but then it's a different type of flight.

Ryanair are another company altogether. The flights are badm the people are awful and you feel like you're getting ripped off constantly.

I refuse to fly ryanair for that reason.

This story reads like that scene from Anchorman when Will Ferrel kicks back and says "Well that escalated quickly..."

No one in this story comes of particularly well but for easyjet it's win-win because nothing truly awful happened but folk are still talking about them.

I am a little puzzled though... How did the EJ staff make the connection between his tweet and him personally? Does he walk around with a sign saying telling everyone who his moniker is? I find that bit really odd.

"Get right into em!"

Sounds pretty threatening to me.

Its my aeroplane, its my rules....

No such thing as free speech when your in someone else's house and your critising your host...

on the small print T&C's there will be a paragraph stating something along the lines of... Easyjet reserve the right to boarding if the passenger is or appears to be under the influence of drink or drugs, poses a threat to staff or other passengers, has a ridiculous haircut or is just a cock...

The bloke is a 'cyber law' buff... so he should know better... His tweet was inciting the mob... if that was sent by a football hooligan/religious zealot/thug, etc then they would be explaining their actions in the comfort of a police interview room....

Erm...

1) Why did he feel the need to Twat the fact that his plain was late? Does he think that:

1a) His audience are actually hanging on to every tweet that he sends?

1b) Anyone in the fucking world actually cares that *his* flight is delayed?

2) Looks like the EJ employee missed his calling. To the Stasi.

Denying boarding for someone who is being disruptive or someone who is drunk I can understand but threatening someone over a twitter post seems a little over the top.

Some sympathy

I take on board all the comments about an obnoxious git bluffing about the law, but when the EJ rep asks ‘What are you, some kind of lawyer?’, I wouldn't deny him the satisfaction of saying "Yes, actually", given that it was true-ish.

I smell bacon

Someone could well be telling porkies here, think about it, all of the following needs to be true:

1. The manager or staff needs to be on Twitter

2. If it's not the manager then one of his staff needs to admit they were on Twitter to their manager during work

3. Said manager or employee needs to actually give enough of a crap to make more difficulty for themselves

4. They identified the bloke in the queue from his Tweet

You've paid for the flight, a contract has been made. If EasyJet don't honour their side of the bargain then you can take them to court, simple as that.

I don't remember reading anywhere that opening being critical of a company breaches your statutory rights?

Are we forgetting Easyjet was wrong?

It seems in all the posts here that everyone is focusing on the guy being a bit of a wanker but are we forgetting that Easyjet was going to ban someone from a plane because of their reporting on something true that happened that made Easyjet look bad?

Lets see the CCTV

His word vs them, and frankly I don't think EasyJet would be this stupid. Far more likely explanation is just another disruptive passenger when faced with delays.

Alternative version of events

So far we've only heard one side of the story. Here's another:

Self-important lecturer wannabe is flying from Glasgow, his flight is delayed 90 minutes, oh noes! He might lose his connection using Gatwick Express (which he doesn't bother to check on his smartphone). He complains and the staff tell him that they can't do anything. He hears that a soldier might miss his connection too. How dare they? Soldiers are super-people entitled to extra effort!

So our hero fires up his Twitter app and complains about it to his thousands of followers! A soldier (and me) might miss connections, come on Twitter, show your rage!

He goes back to the rep and tells them that he's complaining on Twitter, and shows her the tweet.He tells them that unless they pay for a taxi or hotel he will continue causing a stink on Twitter. The manager is called and loses his patience, threatens to throw him out of the flight for being disruptive. Our hero continues to tweet this, assumes victimhood, and watches Twitter explode in rage. One of his journo friends asks him his version of events and prints the story on The Independent.

Internet rage ensues.