It’s not a contract dispute. the airline can refuse service without cause. There is no due process involved beyond asking for volunteers and then choosing a random passenger if that fails.
I think what you are doing there, as others have, is simply expressing your opinion of the contract dispute as if it’s a fact.
They had volunteers, they just laughed at them instead of upping their compensation offer, which is well documented in their contract of carriage.
From the readit thread:
But note that the plane was boarded before the dead head crew even showed up, and United didn’t even offer compensation in the mount that is in their contract of carriage.
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx#sec25
Heck I bet even if the airline has offered top place someone on another carrier in the morning they could have gotten volunteers…which is clearly allowed under their contract of carriage.
The man’s actions don’t matter one bit, this just demonstrates how bad UA’s service and customer concern is.
if they had volunteers then this wouldn’t have happened.
the man’s actions matter a great deal.
They didn’t have volunteers for the low $800 compensation rate, and lets point at the DOT regulations and remember that this was far longer than a two hour delay to a destination.
From the info on the net I have seen, they had one volunteer, and then they picked three people randomly. Two got up and left. One resisted.
As for DOT regulations - this was a short flight. $800 was probably more than 400% of the ticket.
For an $800 travel voucher and a 2:30PM the next day flight. They could have offered more compensation or an earlier flight on another airline. The normal rack rate for advanced booking seems to be $256 for that flight, so they could have offered $1024 in travel voucher or cash.
Note that the IATA recommendations are to be flexible and considerate of travel needs when bumping passengers.
This a million times over.
It may well be in their right and in the contract of carriage to bump someone to a later flight when a flight is overbooked. With proper compensation.
But once the passengers have been allowed to board? To me this looks like a logistical eff up by United. If you need to deadhead employees plan better.
It may not say so in the CoC but it would seem to me if they have even the slightest commitment to customer service, or what I would call basic human decency, they would have found a better way to resolve this situation.
I don’t think this is true. Airlines are common carriers, and AFAIK common carriers have to take all comers unless they have a good reason not to. It’s not like a corner store that reserves the right to refuse service to anyone.
Let’s say you operate a barbershop that usually closes at 8 PM. It’s Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend and you’ve already made plans to close at 7 PM today so you can meet your wife’s family for dinner. You’re preparing to turn the lights off, when suddenly at 7 PM a man shows up and says he’s here for his appointment.
Somewhat flustered, you ask him to take a seat in the waiting area while you run to check your computer. After some confusion, you realize that he had called you some weeks ago and that you had entered his appointment for the wrong date. You apologize profusely, and tell him you can’t cut his hair today because you have to close early, but that he can come back first thing in the morning.
“That’s not acceptable!” he exclaims. “I have a job interview tomorrow morning, I don’t have time! I need this haircut now!”
“I’m really terribly sorry for my mistake, but my family is waiting for me and we have dinner reservations, I really can’t do it tonight,” you politely explain. “You’ll have to come back in the morning, or find someone else.”
“You took my credit card number to book my appointment! I’ve already paid you! I demand that you cut my hair!” The man is turning red and visibly angry. “This is racism! You wouldn’t treat me like this if I were white!”
You are alarmed and take a step back. “Sir, I don’t know what else to tell you, but this has nothing to do with your ethnicity. I have to close early today and I am about to leave, you’ll have to come back tomorrow. If that doesn’t work for you, I will certainly give you a refund.”
The man sits back in his chair and says emphatically “I don’t want a refund, I want a haircut, and I am not leaving until I get what I paid for.”
You are growing impatient yourself. You open the safe and take out some cash to give the man his refund. “Sir, as I said, I simply can’t do this tonight. Here is your refund. Now you need to leave, or I’ll have to call the police.”
The man does not answer, and simply stares at you. He doesn’t accept the money.
With him watching, you call 911 and tell them there is a man in your store who refuses to leave. A police officer shows up within 5 minutes and asks what is going on. You explain the situation.
The cop looks at the man and says to him “I’m sorry, but this is his store and I can’t make him cut your hair tonight. You’ll have to leave.” The man still refuses, insisting that he needs his haircut tonight and that he has already paid for it.
The cop is getting frustrated. “Look buddy, I have other things to do tonight. There’s no law that says he has to cut your hair. He’s offered you a refund - you need to take the money and get out of here.” The man still refuses and simply sits in the chair.
Another officer arrives. Together, they grab the man by the arms and begin to lift him out of the chair. He starts shrieking wildly and flailing his arms. The officers react instinctively and slam him to the ground face first, pinning his arms behind his back so that he can’t strike them. They drag him outside, where they inform him that he’s being arrested for assaulting an officer and start searching him to see if he has any weapons.
Shaken, you turn around and start to clean up the mess in your store. As you are doing so, the man bursts through the door again. He is bleeding from the mouth and still shouting nonsensically about his haircut. The cops are right behind him and they once again grab him, subdue him and drag him into the back of the squad car.
After cleaning up the store and giving the police a full report, it is after 9:00 PM. You’ve long since missed your dinner reservation.
Who was in the wrong in this hypothetical scenario? You, for getting the appointment wrong in the first place? Or the crazed man who refused to leave your store once you asked him to?
It’s not illegal to do things that your customers don’t like. I think overbooking is a pretty shitty business practice, but being personally upset at a shitty business practice doesn’t mean that you have some kind of right to force the business to change it, or that the business can’t call the cops on you if you are interfering with them, or that the cops can’t touch you if you don’t follow their instructions.
There doesn’t seem to be any provision for removing a passengers after boarding was complete.
RULE 21 REFUSAL OF TRANSPORT
Note that the CEO even admits that they were fully boarded before the request for crew transport was even made.
Boarding was not complete.
“Fully boarded” does not equal “boarding is complete”. The plane was still at the gate, and the door was open.
This is a strawman…
Now if the barber forced you to pre-pay, set you in the chair than required you to sleep in the back of their barbershop for an entire day despite the fact that you may lose your job, miss your kids graduation, lose clients, etc… it may start to be similar.
Especially when they called the cops to beat you after they told you that was the only option…
But hey…at least you got a coupon for another free haircut right?
This is simply the system which the US carriers employ. They overbook, many people cancel or are no shows and sometimes there are too many people for the planes.
If the US carriers and the flying public want that system, fine. But be prepared to pay for the inconvenience to those who are screwed over by the system.
Here’s a question in regards to Rule 25 re: overbookings.
If the airline chooses to place its employees on the plane, then is it really an overbooking issue? The definition is
Did the crew members that needed space have tickets and did they check in during the prescribed time? If not, Rule 25 gets thrown out the window.
Again, I’d hate to be the United attorney having to convince a jury that a paying customer had to be dragged out of his seat for a deadhead.
I concur, this is an absolute shitstorm. I’ve skimmed over most of the replies, but is there confirmation that this guy was a very fluent English speaker? No offense, I’m just picturing myself on, say, an international flight to Jakarta or something, and not knowing that these kinds of procedures could happen (hell, I didn’t know this could happen before today, and I’ve flown at least 3 dozen times) and I wouldn’t even know why I was being harassed.
And echoing others, I don’t think that boarded passengers should be individually deplaned for any reason other than the passengers being idiots. If you are seated, then you are served. If you are on a bus or lightrail transit, and the transit is full, people who are already on the vehicle do not get summarily or randomly kicked off in order to board more “important” passengers.
I’ll never book United again. This may well happen elsewhere, but it’s the first I’ve seen of such unkind treatment of passengers. And I’ve also seen, today, how United has treated pet flights (which is not even an important issue for me, but I am dumbfounded). Screw them.
That’s a bunch of bullshit. If your flight is canceled due to weather, the airline has absolutely no legal or moral obligation to give you any compensation, other than a refund or ultimately scheduling you on a later flight. The fact that this would be an inconvenience to you is irrelevant. And the fact that this cancellation was due to a scheduling issue as opposed to a weather or mechanical issue is also irrelevant. If your life is so fragile that a single missed flight is going to cause everything to fall apart, then you really shouldn’t take the risk of flying in the first place, because delays and cancellations are quite common.
I’m with **iiandyiiii **on this one. No way the airline’s approach makes a shred of sense.
Why *randomly *select passengers? It’s guaranteed to backfire by getting an unwilling victim. Rather, by raising the bid, sooner or later you’ll get enough passengers who will cave in for a $1,000 voucher or something. In a planefull of 100 people or what, surely people will begin to raise hands. And since they’ll be willingly giving up their seats, no PR nightmare like this one.
That being said, I also agree with the other posters that this scandal probably won’t hurt United’s ridership much at all. And the passenger should have complied, too.
And for those of you saying that he was still boarding? No where in the CoC does it define “boarding”. So when has he “boarded”? According to their website
Boarding process
So convince me that by United’s implied definition (since it is not explicitly defined) that he had not already boarded? If so, then how can he be kept from boarding after the fact?
Strawman, there is no Force Majeure here.
And you would gladly sleep in the back of your barbers shop if there is a Force Majeure event like a natural disaster.