You have to be rational. You have no choice. What if they discovered his seat back was broken and nobody could use his seat? He paid for that seat. What if they realized there was a weight and balance issue and people had to be removed? They paid for those seats.
While I agree that United should raise the compensation further to get more takers, it is likely that the gate agents at Republic Airlines had certain monetary restrictions they needed to follow. They did recently declare bankruptcy, I doubt they can just offer thousands of dollars for a low cost ticket. If someone is told that they must leave the aircraft, they generally do. It is unlikely that the gate agents knew that he would refuse, and then after he refused, that they knew he would be roughly removed from the aircraft. Pretty sure they don’t know that someone is going to be “assaulted”, as CF accuses.
What ever increase in the offer to a passenger could no way come near the cost of canceling the other flight in the next city (if that is what they were trying to avoid). By increasing the offer, I am sure someone would have offered up their seat.
We have been on overbooked flights already sitting in our seats when they were still looking for volunteers. Once they increased the offer, they had more volunteers than needed.
What if everyone on the plane said the same thing?
Everyone keeps suggesting they should have offered more money, and it certainly would have been better if they resolved it before everyone got on, but we were on a flight once where they wanted people to get back off. Fortunately someone else volunteered, but it can happen. Who knows? When they told him to get off, he should have gotten off, baring any emergency reason why he should be exempted. I agree the video is ugly, but I also don’t think he was justified in just refusing to get off. I’m sure the crew was very frustrated if they felt the need to resort to calling in the airport police.
Yes, I have been on flights where they kept upping the offer to try to get volunteers to get off the flight. I was tempted but there were 4 of us on a flight and the airline wouldn’t guarantee us the next flight so we stayed put.
Imho, the ante should have been raised until they got volunteers. As it is, they will have to pay attorneys, PR damage control and a potential settlement of lawsuit with this passenger. Awful!
That is actually pretty nice that they gave you a flight credit. Bummer they didn’t just let you sit in the seat with the realization that you weren’t going to get fed. I’d be happy with the free wine and upgraded seat, no food required.
I recently took a flight on Alaska from Newark to Seattle. I had a confirmed first class seat, but I was very late on the inbound flight, showed up about 10 minutes prior to push, and there was someone in my seat. I said something to the flight attendant, who moved him back to his seat in coach. He didn’t say a word, and made no fuss at all. I felt kind of bad about it and almost volunteered to take his coach seat, but I had a very long day already, was exhausted, and it was a six hour flight. Felt better about it after dinner, a movie and a couple of glasses of wine. But I know an upgrade (or even a paid for seat), is never actually secure until the flight has begun.
They should never have boarded the plane without the appropriate number of seats.
Any time you have to resort to an involuntary situation it runs the risk of getting ugly. An ugly situation is much better controlled and much easier to diffuse in the gate area then on the plane.
As it stands the flight was delayed by over two hours. Funny I didn’t hear of any major flight issues out of Louisville due to this, therefore, it would appear that getting those employees to Louisville was nowhere as critical as it was made out to be or critical enough to forcefully remove an innocent passenger.
If you fly 40,000 miles per year on United, you are in United Mileage Plus Premier Silver tier (requires 25,000 miles or 30 segments, according to https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/mileageplus/premier/qualify.aspx ), which is two tiers up from the bottom (the lower tiers are non-member and General Member). As such, United will treat you better than a non-member or General Member of its Mileage Plus program, so you are presumably much less likely to be targeted for IDB.
We begged to be allowed to remain and only drink water but were denied and the seats remained empty on the entire 5+ hour flight!
Yes, I have seen gate agents maneuvering folks when there are overbooked flights. I have fortunately never witnessed anyone being forced to leave their seat once on the plane. That sounds quite traumatic for everyone.
However, the more experienced air travelers who know about such things are more likely to have frequent flyer elite status and be less likely to be IDB for that reason (and more likely to have contingency plans, or avoid high risk flights to begin with). The infrequent travelers who do not know such things are more likely to have bad things happen to them during air travel that they may not realize are a risk to happen.
“I have been turned away by hotels and car agencies who have overbooked. Maybe I should just stand there screaming until I get my way because I booked them, I paid for them. They’ll take me to jail before I leave. God forbid a flight get cancelled…I paid for that seat. They’d better send out a private jet for me, right now.”
So when you’ve been given the keys to rental car and are in the car and about to drive out of the lot - you wouidn’t have a problem with them stopping you and saying, "sorry lady, we need this car for one of our employees who needs to get to one of our other locations?
Whoever is running this airline is dumber than a doorknob. They also must know people will be videoing everything that goes on in planes today.
I won’t fly United because there are several other airlines out of my city to choose from,
I rarely fly. Please explain no-shows and overbooking to me. When I fly, I purchase a ticket online and pay for it. Are you saying that people pay for seats and then do not show up? Doesn’t the airline still have the money? Is there a way to reserve a seat - not pay for it - and not show up?
If you buy a refundable fare, the airline doesn’t have the money or the passenger uses it to move to a different flight. Many business travelers fly refundable. It makes it harder to predict loads although computer programs make yield management much better than it used to be.
I would be angry, however if I knew it was a possibility, I would not be crazy enraged to the point where they’d have to drag me out of the car. And if I knew that employee having the car was going to prevent delays to hundreds of other people, I would understand, even if I didn’t like it.
If you are a platinum member (fly 100,000 miles/year) on many airlines, you can change or cancel your flight at the last minute with little or no financial penalty. These are folks who may just go the the airport and hop on an earlier flight. This can throw off the count of his many people will be in any given flight
Airlines like to fly as full as possible to make as much money as possible. If they also have to carry employees to another city for work, they will also end up overly full and have a situation like the one that started this whole mess.
I’ve never heard of reserving a seat on a plane without paying.
If you purchase a nonrefundable ticket, you will generally cancel your ticket ahead of time to get the remaining funds. But on a refundable ticket, you will get the money back, regardless, sometimes even if you forget to cancel. It is not unusual for people to book a flight and then miss it, or their connection to be late and now their seat is open. For business tickets, it is quite often that companies may not cancel the tickets in time (refundable), and the seat is now available…though the airline will not release them far ahead of time, because they don’t know. Quite often I book refundable tickets on two fights for the same day, and try to remember to cancel one of them. It’s a ticket, not just a reservation, but the money is refunded if the ticket is unused.
The passenger is on a delayed flight and will miss the connection to this flight.
The passenger fails to check in on time.
The passenger arrives on an international flight and does not make it through customs and immigration fast enough to get to this flight that s/he intended to connect to.
The passenger otherwise fails to get to the gate on time to board (e.g. traffic delay getting to the airport).
The passenger changes his/her flight at the last minute.
Most airlines overbook based on the expected number of no-shows, because it allows them to gain more revenue for the flight. Obviously, if they guess incorrectly, and there are fewer no-shows than expected, they must do VDB and/or IDB. Problems can also occur if another flight is cancelled and the airline needs to find seats for the cancelled flight’s passengers (even if the airline does not intentionally overbook, like Jet Blue).
Normally, some passengers do not get a seat assignment or real boarding pass upon check in, and must get their seat assignments and boarding passes at the gate. In an overbooking situation, it is likely that these passengers are most vulnerable to IDB if the airline does not get enough VDB.
It is extremely unusual for an airline to remove someone who has already boarded the plane to resolve an overbooking situation.
Oh yes, the fed govt tickets are all refundable and cancellable without penalty–that’s part of the contract since the govt likes to reserve the right to change plans with little to no notice to its employees.
Generally, cancellable tickets cost significantly more than nonrefundable tickets. Non refundable tickets actually CAN have some value but often impose a significant $150-200 change fee per ticket. If you have an MD note about why you had to cancel your flight and rebook you may be able to get a refund of the change fee.
Then they could offer more money. Or they could rent a car for the four employees. Or they could find other employees in Chicago to perform the job of the employees who couldn’t make it. Or they could think of some other way to solve their problem, other than calling in goons.
Point is, the airline caused itself a problem. It’s up to the airline, not the person who bought the seat, paid for the seat and is sitting in the seat to solve the problem the airline caused for itself. If the lower-level employees do not have the authority to offer enough money to induce someone to volunteer to give up their seats, that is the airlines problem to solve.
Flying as become such a degrading experience, I’ve pretty much given up on United. I used to have all my frequent flyer miles on UAL, but no longer. Southwest is cheap, but they don’t forget customer service. I’d go out of my way to fly Southwest. JetBlue, Alaska, and even Delta is better than United.