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A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

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Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#521

Post by Scea91 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #257
toomuchtodo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's equipment waiting in Louisville, and another entire plane isn't going anywhere without them, that's how its justifiable. IDB means you can (legally) be physically removed from a flight. 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…

Still doesn't make the original flight "oversold". That's a very specific term in airline travel relating to ticketed seats sold for a flight, not a United staffing fuckup. Edited: for clarity.

It's still overselling. The maximum capacity is just not N but N - 4.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#522

Post by Scea91 »

mcv wrote: post #314
MattSteelblade wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, you're correct. Deny Boarding can be avoided by checking in early. These people had boarded and the plane was full before the mistake was realized. EDIT: Still unsure as to the legality of this. IDB is well established, but the fact that everyone has boarded is a different matter. Reading the contract of carriage did not bring any more light to this point. And let's be clear, denying someone an…

If the airline makes a mistake and realizes that mistake too late, they should take the hit themselves, not punish an innocent passenger for their own mistake. Airlines should make a better effort to avoid overbooking. If they can get away with this kind of despicable behaviour, they'll never improve.

Thanks to overbooking, flying is cheaper and more efficient. I do not think there is a need to avoid it.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#523

Post by Scea91 »

syshum wrote: post #465
problems wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand why they overbook - jetfuel is extremely expensive and produces a massive amount of carbon pollution - most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. Cargo is cheaper to fly than passengers and many of them are converting more and more towards cargo for that reason. You don't want to be flying around in jets which aren't at capacity, it's an enormous waste of money and fuel - your tick…

> jetfuel is extremely expensive and produces a massive amount of carbon pollution Which is not relevant to over booking, >most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. False, extremely false >You don't want to be flying around in jets which aren't at capacity, you do not want to be flying around jets that have UNSOLD seats, you do want to be flying around jets that have SOLD but unoccupied seats, it costs…

If they need to make some ammount from tickets, lets say $10000. Then your ticket can cost either $35 or $32 if they overbook.

Parent is right you are wrong. It is economical to sell as many tickets as possible and ecological to try to fit in as many people as possible to a single flight. Overbooking is good and helps with both.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#524

Post by btbuildem »

tdb7893 wrote: post #362
btbuildem wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does any of that justify assault and bodily harm?

How else should they have gotten him off the plane? Legally he needed to leave and they had asked him to leave peaceably

Just sit there, hold the plane and wait until other passengers get fed up and start asking him to leave. Peer pressure like that could very well work.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#526

Post by gerbilly »

phil21 wrote: post #117
WillyOnWheels wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Computer randomly selected 4 passengers for removal.

Is it random? I imagine they are not kicking a Global Services passenger off because they got RNG'ed. Most likely the lowest fare ticket on the plane, since compensation is capped at 4x the cost of the segment.

They never said random, they said a computer chose who to bump, probably like this:

    select name from passengers order by ticket_price desc limit 4;

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#527

Post by FabHK »

AjithAntony wrote: post #509
gdubs wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, there's no way it would get that high. Likely people were willing to be bought out, but wanted it to be "worth it". Fear of missing out would intervene very quickly, once the vouchers reached a certain point. Even on a plane full of game theorists, willing to bid up to a million dollars, you're still probably miles away from the amount this will cost in negative PR, to say the least.

I think one of the articles or tweets said that some passengers offered to go if they were given $1000

United apparently offered USD 800 plus a hotel room for the night; that seems pretty close.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#528

Post by tdb7893 »

btbuildem wrote: post #524
tdb7893 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else should they have gotten him off the plane? Legally he needed to leave and they had asked him to leave peaceably

Just sit there, hold the plane and wait until other passengers get fed up and start asking him to leave. Peer pressure like that could very well work.

Yes but then all the people will miss their connections if you delay that long. Also you run the risk of the guy refusing to leave and you need to take him off anyway.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#529

Post by jessaustin »

problems wrote: post #437
jessaustin wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin. You would if you were a grocer. Deregulated airlines have low margins; that's a fact of life. They pay fuel bills, they pay interest, the executives steal what they can, and the unions take everything else. When they miscalculate and pay the unions so much they can't cover their bonds, they reorganize through bankr…

I did not suggest this justifies anything - in fact I said this was severely mishandled. I merely tried to explain the slight against overbooking some people seem to have - which is mostly unrelated entirely, but that's why I didn't respond to the top post, but to a post complaining about the practice of overbooking. Though I don't see anything that makes me think this was a racist act, where'd you get that idea?

Sorry I thought you were talking about airline profits, and offering an opinion about them. I disagree with the opinion I thought you offered, because every deregulated airline in existence has similar or worse margins, nearly all the time. Somehow most of them have been able to avoid both brutalizing their passengers and United-level overbooking.

It's racist because a small middle-aged Chinese physician was forcibly removed. There's no way they would have removed a middle-aged white physician. Likewise, even the big tough airline security asshole who assaulted the physician would have hesitated to forcibly remove someone his own size or larger. This passenger was someone he could handle the way he would handle a child or a woman, without suffering the same legal repercussions that handling a child or woman in that fashion would entail.

Yes, I know there are reports of using a "random computer" to select this passenger. That's what's known in the airline industry as "lying" and in the media industry as "we like to copy and paste press releases".

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