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On this note, can someone ELI5 overbooking? Why is it so hard for these companies to just not overbook? Genuinely asking.
Simple. They overbook on purpose. There is usually a percentage of people that miss a flight, so airlines overbook to account for this trying to get every seat filled.
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United employees taking passenger's seats? That's not overbooked. That's robbery.
Not like united employees going on vacation or to a meeting. But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. If they can't get to where they need to be a flight will have to be delayed or canceled.
I understand the economics, but it's still bullshit. Those customers want to get home and they're boarded. I think everyone should do what this guy did in this situation. He paid for a flight. He didn't read through the 10 pages of bullshit EULA (no one does) and then they assaulted him to remove him from a flight. The whole plane looked angry. Now United has a PR nightmare .. that will last 3 days before everyone forgets. People keep flying United and nothing really happens.
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Legally - is this considered assault?
I'd venture to guess likely not at first glance - the guy was trespassing at that point and refused to move. The only alternative from that limited perspective is use of force. You can't just refuse to leave an aircraft when instructed to do so by the crew. The reason simply doesn't matter - the time to fight about that is off the aircraft. It may be considered excessive force however - which likely opens up avenues…
As I read the article, the police showed up, and he still refused to leave the aircraft. You can't just refuse when the cops tell you to leave. There are going to be physical consequences for that.
> It may be considered excessive force however
Yes, it may.
They messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. But why on earth would they forcefully drag people out of the plane, while they could just find volunteers? They could offer cash/miles to whoever volunteered, increasing the offer until someone accepted. I've seen other airlines do this on several occasions. They couldn't have handled it worse than they did.
> They messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. To be clear, every flight is overbooked. The airlines have run the numbers, and it is clearly more profitable to sell (for example) 105% of the plane, and then if more than 100% show up, pay people off to take a different flight.
Someone on a different message board put this situation very well: By the letter of the law, United was correct - morally, they were not. Their 'contract of carriage' allows them to IDB (Involuntary Deny Boarding) to passengers due to overselling, and bump people off at-will. Depending on how delayed the passenger would be to their final destination, they would owe compensation (up to a max of $1350) for the trouble.…
> Their 'contract of carriage' allows them to IDB (Involuntary Deny Boarding) to passengers due to overselling, and bump people off at-will. But my understanding from the article is that the problem here was not overselling; they decided to give priority to moving their employees around over providing the contracted service to ticketed passengers. It's hard to see how that's justifiable even by the letter of the law.
With that said, don't drag people off your flights. No matter what it costs you to get staff where they need to be when you make this mistake, it'll be cheaper than the negative publicity of a physical altercation removing a passenger (even if you need to retask a commuter aircraft just to relocate the crew, or ask another carrier to get them there).
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I think you're wrong. They should have upped their monetary incentive until someone left voluntarily. It was their business fuckup, not the passenger's, and they should pay for it.
Yeah, the mistake was United's. But the passenger also acted unreasonably. If you act like a two-year-old - even in a situation that, initially, totally isn't your fault - then you may get treated like a two-year-old. And if you act like a two-year-old after the cops start telling you to leave, they're typically going to make you leave - using whatever level of force is required to do so. So, yes, the initial fault i…
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I'm not one to get outraged easily, but seriously this story is shameful. They needed the seats, fine. They asked for people to volunteer and no one did? Did they even offer maybe a 1st class on a flight taking off a few hours later? I can't imagine that out of more than 100 people they wouldn't find at least 4 interested in waiting in the airport to travel 1st class. They handled that like bozos and I can absolutely…
> I can't imagine that out of more than 100 people they wouldn't find at least 4 interested in waiting in the airport to travel 1st class. Apparently they did. The law is pretty clear on this. You can be refused a flight for this reason - United decided that they wanted the seat for their employee more than the passenger. Once the passenger starts resisting, he/she should get removed by any means necessary, up to and…
Some comments here talk about $800. I don't think that's equivalent to a 1st ticket, but I may be wrong.
In any case, they may have the law, but I still think it was very poorly handled.
I'm also curious to know what was their random process to select the 4 passengers.
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The problem is that what's legal and what's ethical have diverged into two wholly different things. "The law" is now often used to aid in unethical activity, not to prevent it.
The other problem is what society views as ethical or moral is now subjective to each on a variety of different factors in this post post-modern society. There was once puritanical values, however despised they are by certain factions, which unified the "ethos" of the nation on what is and is not ethical. The civil rights movement came along and augmented that ethos for the better. Now we have groups who place abando…