How to finagle something for nothing from an airline

To finagle something from someone is to use deception or deceit or various tricks to get something from a person that he/she does not really want to give you.

United Airlines has been having a bad year. They have experienced a lot of bad publicity (bad stories about the company). The latest bad publicity was the death of Kokito - the French bulldog - in one of their overhead bins.

In this article we hear that a person was 'bumped' from a United flight because a seat on the plane was broken and one passenger had to be removed. 

United has a policy of asking for volunteers when passengers have to be removed and they reward the volunteers with a voucher for free travel if they help by leaving the plane.

If nobody volunteers, they 'bump' or remove the person who bought the cheapest ticket. Why? I am guessing they feel that the person who paid the least for a ticket will complain the least. This person is also given a voucher.

So they decided to bump someone who is a communications director for a company. This person has over 2,000 Twitter followers and when she was bumped she started bad-mouthing United to her twitter friends, hoping to create a new scandal for the airline (I am guessing). In order to avoid another scandal United gave this person a $10,000 voucher (so that she would shut up). But she did not shut up - she began boasting about how she finagled something valuable from the airline. So United just cannot seem to win these days.

Personally, I think she took advantage of the airline and she should be ashamed of herself. People do not even try to look at situations through anyone else's perspective any more. What else was the airline going to do? She only paid $160 for a ticket and they offered her a $1,000 voucher. Be a good person, take the $1,000 voucher and get on the next plane. No? Why does everyone have to be such a drama queen?

Please show some sympathy for United Airlines...

The article:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/23/passenger-scores-10k-flight-voucher-thanks-to-twitter-rant/

Vocabulary from the article:

a bumped passenger - a passenger who is removed from an airline flight, often because the airline has sold more tickets than seats available

to score a voucher - to win a voucher, to score something is to get something valuable for free or at a discount.  e.g. Hey! I scored free tickets to the Chicago Sympathy Orchestra concert tonight! My roommate can't go and he gave them to me!

k  - 1,000, so 10K = 10,000

a tirade - a long speech where a person expresses anger; when a person expresses anger verbally for a long time. e.g. Our boss was so angry about losing this client that he went on a 30 minute tirade telling us all that we suck!

to finagle something from someone - to get something you do not deserve by using psychological games or by tricking the other person

to be smarting - to be suffering, to be feeling pain.  Even though I fell skiing 3 days ago, my left knee is still smarting.

a string of something - a sequence of something. So if you have had 5 bad boyfriends in a row, you might say, "Wow, I have had a string of 5 bad boyfriends, when is my luck going to change?!"

public relations - every big company has a public relations department. This department tries to make the company look good. If you have a public relations disaster, it means things have happened to make your company look bad.  

smarting from a string of public relations disasters - United is suffering from a bunch of bad news stories in a row

a company rep - a company representative

she got the boot - she got kicked off the plane, she was removed from the plane.  e.g. Wow our company is firing a lot of people these days! I heard three people from our department got the boot today. or: Our boss gave the boot to three people from our department today.

to be enraged - to be very, very angry

to vent about something - to complain about something in order to make yourself feel better. e.g. Sorry for calling you and telling you this, I just had to vent!

if nobody bites - if nobody accepts the offer.  If you go fishing you put something attractive to the fish on your hook and hope a fish bites. If you offer something to a group of people, you hope someone bites.

on the upside - the good news is

I wasn't physically dragged off the plane etc. - this is sarcasm, she is saying thank God United didn't beat me up like Dr. Dao or kill my dog like Kokito.

United upped its offer - it increased its offer

to toss in a perk - to throw in an extra benefit; a perk is an added benefit