Earlier quoted context omitted.
Breaking up oligopolies via "antitrust"?
You want... more, smaller airlines?
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United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
41–50 of 464 posts
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#42What a lack of professionalism. The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated. It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurr…
Also, we know now that it's illegal to remove customers after boarding, unless they do something illegal. Saying no isn't illegal.
That's not true. Airlines can remove a passengers for safety reasons whenever they need to.
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#43I'm appalled by how this frontal assault on human dignity is shielded by law. What many of us learned this week is that it seems to be perfectly legal to bump off poorer or less privileged people specifically from a plane. This is boat allocation on Titanic all over again.
No, it's not legal. Edit: See lawyer quote from tiatia.
In a way, there are two questions at work here.
The first question is whether you can have rent-a-cops throw a passenger off a plane after they have taken their seat. As I understand it, that is not legal.
The second question is about over-booking more broadly. After all, though there's a legal distinction between a passenger a second before boarding and a second after, from a customer service standpoint they're still denied the seat they were promised. Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be?
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, we know now that it's illegal to remove customers after boarding, unless they do something illegal. Saying no isn't illegal.
Apparently united position is that you haven't "boarded" until the door has closed and plane has left the gate
That works both ways. If you are on a flexible ticket you can get a refund up until the door is closed. All these rules work 2 ways.
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, we know now that it's illegal to remove customers after boarding, unless they do something illegal. Saying no isn't illegal.
I'm sure they could create a Soviet style no win situation if they want to. " Sir please deplane we need your seat " " No- I haven't done anything illegal and am in my seat already " " Looks like he's not following crew instructions! Get em' boys! "
Like being arrested for resisting arrest.
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#46Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now. Not just the United incident(s) but also TSA, Trump travel restrictions, flights constantly overbooked, massively late etc. I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at t…
This is actually a really good thing if numbers are greatly hit. It'll hopefully lead to the entire US travel industry to focus on becoming the most travel friendly place it can be. But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care.
>But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care.
Also time. Something like a fundamental travel industry shakeup could take decades. Here's hoping. As a Canadian, crossing that border is getting less and less appealing.
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#47He and the doctor may have a solid legal case: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-... I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.
> ...not a pattern of behavior. It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience. Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight…
This is exactly right. My girlfriend was extremely frustrated when WestJet (Canadian) introduced "first class". For a long long time they had gotten on just fine with a single kind of seat for every passenger.
The same tendency towards "privileging" can be seen in the constant push for two tier health care and two tier education systems (here Alberta is a bulwark, compared to Quebec).
Anyway, great post. I'd love for this kind of analysis to reach the mainstream.
Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler
#48Browsing that on firefox on mobile was terrible, about part way down the page a fullscreen video overlay appears that I couldn't work out how to close.