United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

This is just golden...

"placing him in the middle seat between a married couple who were in the midst of a nasty fight and refused to be seated next to each other."

Crews don't even try to move them to be seated next to each others.

It has someting to do with FAA regulations.

Basically, they own you when you step on that plane.

Airlines seem pretty regulated already. Maybe there's another word for what you want to happen?

Travelling 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 this point.

Recently Canada's girl guides cancelled all trips to the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-gui....

I wonder if this is a first step of a large trend yet to develop.

I have not used United in many years after a major cluster f.. on a trip. Things like this were supposed to happen sooner or later. This airline hast a total "FU" attitude regarding customers. It is the only airline that I insist of not using.

Regarding the boarding, this was posted by a lawyer:

[Edit: This is about the recent incident, not this HN post]

1. First of all, it’s airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about “OVERSELLING”, which is specifically defined as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to deny boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.

2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it’s clear that what they did was illegal– they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.

3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you’ve boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn’t have been targeted. He’s going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.