For the uninitiated in here (which seems to be the vast majority of you), this flight was not overbooked. Standard procedure (and I've been in overbook situations many times) is that the airline resolves the overbook status AT THE GATE, before any passenger boards the plane. This was a situation where four United employees were deadheading to Louisville, so they could operate a flight to Newark the next day. These four employees put the flight into an overload status, so they had to remove passengers to accommodate the employees (deadheading happens ALL the time, and in virtually all situations, a deadhead employee has priority over a paying customer, from an operational standpoint - ALL airlines do this).
That being said, United completely mishandled this situation. The $800 cap on rewards for overbooking volunteers doesn't apply here, as passengers were already boarded. They could have continued upping the ante until they got enough volunteers. Instead, they brought in the Waffen SS.
This thread was one of the more interesting write-ups I read yesterday regarding this situation:
https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/851465316362334208This post was edited by Surfpunk on Apr 11 2017 09:21am