131–140 of 549 posts
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Whoever decided to force the guy off the plane is an idiot. They could have simply raised the comp for volunteering slowly until someone took the money.
But that costs money immediately. Forcing someone off the plane and causing a huge HR mess only costs money long-term, and it doesn't come out of my budget, so why should I care?
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Tough day for them, but now tomorrow I'm sure customers will be a lot more compliant and willing to take arbitrary orders to save the airline money, and that will make everyone's job easier. #WorthIt
Sadly, you're probably right. One suspects there have been several memos from corporate directing gate agents to reduce voucher spending by any means necessary. It isn't shocking that the obvious solution to this gate agent was to beat up a random Chinese guy.
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 made offers - 1) $400 2) $800 3 and final) Leave the airplane or we'll beat the shit out of you. Glad I made the decision to not fly United 4 years ago.
I find it hard to believe no one volunteered, even for a small amount, unless they were already delayed
This is just a guess...United needed to get a couple of pilots on the flight from Chicago to Louisville or else another flight would be delayed/canceled. Only reason I can think of an employee would take precedence over passenger.
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The responsible action, is for the business to accept the overbooking as their fault, and arrange alternative traveling plans for their employees. Forcibly removing a customer due to overbooking should never happen, and a customer should be able to refuse. His actions while extreme to some, were reasonable IMHO.
On this note, can someone ELI5 overbooking? Why is it so hard for these companies to just not overbook? Genuinely asking.
When a business is acting in an abhorent, immoral, or unethical manner profit and greed are nearly always the fundamental reasons.
Why not use the jump seats?
Today must be a fun day to be on United's PR team.
Airlines operate in very uncertain and variable environments (weather isn't always what it is predicted, mechanical issues are pretty common, and pilots can get sick and other stuff) and having planes or pilots on call everywhere is prohibitive expensive so it's really not surprising that they have to do stuff like this sometimes. Airlines need to be more up front about their policies but there doesn't seem to be a g…
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.…
But if you have to take people off the aircraft, that looks like a last minute decision made by the airline to move staff.
The best approach would have been to up the reward/incentive.
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> 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…
Did they actually offer that to the passengers? I didn't see any mention of this in the article. 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.