Quote (Bazi @ Apr 11 2017 09:39am)

Tricky situation, however I feel like it could have been handled better than barging someone from their seat. What if the person had some bone disorder and is easily susceptible to fractures etc, don't think it should be left to security to handle these types of situations

They went to $800? Give me a break. If they went to $3000 someone would have budged

Quote (excellence @ Apr 11 2017 10:42am)

they'll be paying out a lot more than that and will have already lost probably a multiple of 100x this by now in people deciding to take their business elsewhere already, not to mention the dip in stock today.
$3k, $5k whatever like you said there would eventually be some guy or gal that would say "f it this is worth the hassle of me getting home a day later"

Quote (Surfpunk @ Apr 11 2017 09:46am)

This. UAL has already lost close to $1 billion in market cap today alone (as of this posting their stock is down 4.04% just today).

Quote (u/stemloop)

It doesn't seem like this situation went off as it should have though. From /u/deskreference's comment taken from https://thepointsguy.com/2017/04/your-rights-on-involuntary-bumps/
Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. You are dead wrong when saying that United legally kicked him off the plane.
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 "OVERSALES", specifically defines 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 denying 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.

Quote (AspenSniper @ Apr 11 2017 05:33am)

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/text-of-letter-from-united-ceo-defending-employees/ar-BBzGiwF?li=BBnb7Kz

For those who haven't seen it, United Airlines overbooked a flight, as all airlines often do. They attempted first to offer $1000 for 4 people to get off the plane because they overbooked. No one said yes. So, instead of saying, fuck it, $2000 a person, they asked randomly selected passengers to leave. One guy, a 60+ year old Asian doctor who had to get back to patients the next day, was one randomly selected. He refused to get off when asked nicely. So, United gets the police to physically drag him off the flight, dropping him causing him to cut open his lip in the process.

The CEO of United rather than emphatically apologizing and saying they should never use physical force against their customers, blamed the Asian doctor. He said the Asian guy "refused and became more disruptive and belligerent... our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security... He repeatedly declined to leave... they physically removed him as he resisted."

The CEO didn't apologize and essentially just victim blamed the whole time basically saying, if he would've just complied to orders he would've been fine. Alright, true, but are you fucking kidding me? Take out the fact that he's a doctor, but the guy booked his flight, bought his ticket, didn't want to leave. The policy is supposed to be, keep raising the dollar amount til someone on the plane says "aight fuck it yeah i'll take $2500 to take a flight tomorrow." They didn't do that. They used physical force and in all likelihood will end up settling this case for millions.

Typically, I'm not really on the side of the victim. Typically I'd say, come on idiot you know you're about to get dragged off the plane, just leave. However, I can't really blame the guy for not wanting to leave. The most egregious part of this is the CEO barely even apologizing. He apologizes to his staff, but doesn't cave at all. He says the crew and security acted as they were supposed to. That's absolutely insane. Even if you don't believe it, at least lie and say you're so sorry for the victim and you'll be treating his family to a free anywhere in the world trip to mildly compensate what he went through, or something like that.

This is pretty terrible.

Quote (BardOfXiix @ Apr 11 2017 11:45am)

Why do you think this is a problem? It's a private company and they can create whatever stipulations they want on their service. If you don't like the way the company is run, book with another company.