Passenger dragged off overbooked United flight

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

48 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Doesn't matter. The airline is going to look absolutely awful because of this, and rightly so.

why rightly so? You act as if other airlines haven't kicked paying customers off of their airplanes before.

[lownslo 592]

9 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

who said this guy wasn't offered other alternatives?

That doesn't matter here.  The folks making the decisions that drove this incident into the ditch have proven themselves to be far down on Darwin's list.  In the end United/Republic will suffer greatly because of the PR mess, and well they should.  It was their employees and the wannabe rocket scientists from CPD who let this get so ugly.  They all deserve what they get.  Only thing to wonder about now is what that passenger will name his new airline?  (For those without a sense of humor, that is a rhetorical question).

Greg

[Iceman2 110]

Sad day for humanity,

The worlds gone nuts. No one should ever be treated this way. As an Airline pilot I know people have rights to travel when they pay for an airline ticket. But the airline also has rights not to fly them if they choose not to. Over booking is annoying and is considered a form of gambling by management, works 99% of the time.

I suspect certain SOPs were not followed properly by the gate agent in this case, and maybe a better way to handle this situation is to temporarily cancel the flight until somebody(s) is willing to step off and offered attractive compensation. If no one offers (more than likely on the last flight of the day) then the airline still (maybe the wrong choice) has the right to ask one or even all the people to leave and if they refuse then the airline can cancel the flight until things are resolved peacefully knowing that the airlines reputation is on display.

My guess is the flight was full and the United subsidiary Airline needed to transport their staff but in this case management lost on the gamble, If every passenger was seated with confirmed tickets and boarding passes then a good airline would probably have chartered another aircraft for the staff or as CHOCK said drive them, this quite the norm believe me.

An Airline has the responsibility to keep its passengers safe or unharmed from gate to gate. Shame on them for allowing this heavy handed approach. Passengers also need to realise that even if they buy a ticket it doesn't mean the airline has to fly them anywhere. (read the fine print)  If you're asked to get off, sadly you gota  go!

A good airline always has their customers best interests at heart.

I hope United Airlines looks closely at this subsidiary airline and perhaps severs the ties.

 

 Just IMHO

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

2 hours ago, KevinAu said:

Just a few thoughts from someone who once flew rj's in the united express world.

1. This would have been the call of the gate agent.  Flight deck crew would have only been vaguely aware that there was some kind of boarding issue in the back, as he was not drunk or harrassing another passenger, so not a safety or security issue.  Most likely an agent with an authority complex like the other week, this time a little too zealous to bring in the police.  And when you bring a hammer to a party, everybody looks like a nail.

2. There could have been more that the agent could have done to solicit volunteers, as there is definitely more upwards room for the store credit coupons than a mere $800, before escalating to a physical altercation.

3. I have some questions as to the last minute nature of the four deadheaders that led to the situation.  Was this the absolute last flight they could have been placed on?  This flight that was already full that Republic crew scheduling decided to dh the four crew on that was already boarded, forcing the agent to unseat instead of the easier task of denying boarding?  Was it 'last minute' because the agent forgot to hold their seats?  Was it 'last minute' because Republic crew scheduling forgot to 'list' the four onto that flight, so that the agent knew nothing about them until they walked up?  Either way, if any of that is true, then that would be a screw up on the part of United/Republic, which no passenger on that plane should have been penalized for, in my opinion.  Delay the flight that dh crew was on their way to, mark the delay to scheduling or that agent, and then fire thr responsible person.  Better than this pr fiasco.

 

Absolutely the exact same questions I had - to the "T".

I simply can't fathom why this got to a physical level -  no excuse for that.

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

31 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

why rightly so? You act as if other airlines haven't kicked paying customers off of their airplanes before.

It's kind of a moot point when the majority of posters in this threads answers already say in various ways all I would have said and more.

[SirBismuth 9]

I am on UAL's side here, they gave pax the chance to volunteer, no one did, so they, or the computer, randomly chose four people, as I understand.

The other 3 deplaned, this one refused to, so the forcibly removed him.  Does it not state somewhere in the Ts&Cs that they can ask to to leave, with or without assistance, for pretty much any reason?

However, this is indeed going to be a PR nightmare for United, and this guy will probably get a pile of cash from them as a result.

I worked for a local regional airline that had a server dedicated to calculating how much they can overbook a flight by.  I somehow doubt they are the only one that does this.  The airlines do this so that they can get their flights as full as possible.  As already stated in this thread, that works 99% of the time, for the other 1%, you have pax that are denied boarding, usually at the gate/checkin, or in this case, dragged off the flight.  

[Christopher Low 5,331]

I had absolutely no idea that fare paying passengers could be hauled off airliners if airline employees needed to be on that particular flight. Frankly, I think that's a joke. Like Alan states further back in this thread...if an airline needs some of its employees elsewhere, then it should charter a plane to fly them there, or find some other alternative. Booting fare paying passengers off aircraft is unacceptable. I don't care what it says on the back of the ticket.

[KevinAu 441]

28 minutes ago, SirBismuth said:

I am on UAL's side here, they gave pax the chance to volunteer, no one did, so they, or the computer, randomly chose four people, as I understand.

The other 3 deplaned, this one refused to, so the forcibly removed him.  Does it not state somewhere in the Ts&Cs that they can ask to to leave, with or without assistance, for pretty much any reason?

However, this is indeed going to be a PR nightmare for United, and this guy will probably get a pile of cash from them as a result.

I worked for a local regional airline that had a server dedicated to calculating how much they can overbook a flight by.  I somehow doubt they are the only one that does this.  The airlines do this so that they can get their flights as full as possible.  As already stated in this thread, that works 99% of the time, for the other 1%, you have pax that are denied boarding, usually at the gate/checkin, or in this case, dragged off the flight.  

I think you are being a bit overly blaise about thd 'dragged off the flight' part.  That part of the gamble should have never happened.  For that to happen, it means some employee did not follow procedures to allow that situation to develop.  Somebody should be held accountable for that mistake and causing this situation.    I fly for an airline that has a policy of not overbooking flights.  Of course that does not mean that it would never happen from weather, maintenance or other unforseen circumstances, but our management sees an ethical issue and a marketing opportunity with it.  Legal or not, gambling on selling several seats out of every flight to two different people is unarguably an extremely greedy and deceitful practice, with a good possibility of leaving a customer feeling very cheated.  Imagine if aerosoft, pmdg, imaginesim or orbx did something like that?  That the small print says that even if you paynfor this addon, there is a chance that you will not receive it and that you will have no recourse.  Imagine the outcry here, and I would bet you wouldn't say you were on aerosoft's side.

[skelsey 765]

22 minutes ago, SirBismuth said:

I am on UAL's side here, they gave pax the chance to volunteer, no one did, so they, or the computer, randomly chose four people, as I understand.

The other 3 deplaned, this one refused to, so the forcibly removed him.  Does it not state somewhere in the Ts&Cs that they can ask to to leave, with or without assistance, for pretty much any reason?

Sure. But just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.

There are so many other alternatives here it's unreal. Overbooking is a fact of life, but it should be dealt with at check-in, not on the aircraft. It's the airline's commercial decision. So why treat it like it's the customer's fault? What did he do deserve being chucked off the flight other than buy a ticket on UAL? Bet he won't make that mistake again.

It's just atrocious customer service. I cannot believe there was no better way to get those crew to where they needed to be. Again, comes back to the same thing: UAL's problem, not the customer's. I don't know where the deadheading crew were in all of this but frankly I'm slightly surprised if they were anywhere near seeing what was going on that none of them took control of the situation and offered to offload themselves in order to protect the brand from what is now a PR nightmare. Those images will be hard to forget and you can bet the social media memes will just keep on doing the rounds every time UA crops up in discussion.

I thought the response of the airline's press office was pretty poor as well: given the shocking nature of those images, they needed to come out and be clear and blunt that that sort of thing is unacceptable. Not issue some mealy-mouthed press release about 'reaccomodating' some customers.

[thibodba57 462]

3 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I had absolutely no idea that fare paying passengers could be hauled off airliners if airline employees needed to be on that particular flight. Frankly, I think that's a joke. Like Alan states further back in this thread...if an airline needs some of its employees elsewhere, then it should charter a plane to fly them there, or find some other alternative. Booting fare paying passengers off aircraft is unacceptable. I don't care what it says on the back of the ticket.

Booting off the flight is perfectly acceptable.  It's the contract you sign when you buy the ticket with ANY airline.  How they went about it however needs lots of improvement.

But was also unacceptable is the way the passenger resisted.  Never ever ever resist in any way on the aircraft.  I'm amazed I even need to say that on this site.  The place to slug this out with the airline is off the plane and at the counter.  He's lucky they let him on the next flight out.

As to "Suing the airline."  Not gonna happen.  He could sue TSA and the local enforcement agency.  But by the time they got involved he was already getting verbal with the Crew and violating the Contract of Carriage.  So he was in a way trespassing and interfering with the duties of an aircrew.  But the people that physically accosted him was the TSA and the LEO not the airline.

[scottb613 1,186]

Hi Folks,

Wow - this will cost United far far more than a measly $800.00...

The contract of carriage actually states that they can deny boarding - not forcibly remove a paid customer from the plane after they have a boarding pass and are boarded... United has already publically admitted their personnel were off the reservation on this matter...

It wasn't a random selection - they selectively chose people in the cheap seats without membership in their frequent flying programs...

Pretty "unsat" in my book...

Regards,
Scott

 

[VeryBumpy 272]

Depending on the terms and conditions of the ticket contract, I can very well see the possibility of the doctor being sued for this incident, causing the bad PR and resulting loss of United income.

As others have stated, better handling of the situation could of been instigated.

It's never a good idea to go up against the legal authority in a physical fashion.

[costamesa 88]

I have never understood the "fair point" in "overbooking". It is completely b***######.

[jagabom 21]

United also breaks guitars. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars

Jim

CYWG

 

[RedSpinnaker 35]

Hopefully now that the DOT is involved, this will force some regulation/changes on allowing airlines to overbook.

UAL's Contract of Carriage aside (which gives them the right to deny boarding), a lot of things could have been done differently. Unfortunately the video only shows the last 30-40 seconds of what was taking place for over 15 minutes. 

Moral of the story is this: if things have devolved to you being asked the leave the aircraft by the police, you get up quietly and leave. Their job is to get you off the plane. You will not win that argument. Granted the video shows him being forceably removed, I'm more than confident they asked him politely to get up and leave before the one cop went way over the line.