Slashdot Mirror
Why Do Airlines Overbook? (bbc.com)
From a report on BBC: A common overbooking problem on a United Airlines flight on Sunday ended with a man being bloodied and dragged from his seat and an already troubled airline earning more bad press. How did it all go so wrong? Overbooking on flights happens all the time. Empty seats cost airlines money, so they offset the number of passengers who miss flights by selling too many tickets. In this case, the problem arose because United decided at the last minute to fly four members of staff to a connection point and needed to bump four passengers to make way for them. When there's an overbooking issue the first step is to offer an inducement to the passengers to take a later flight. [...] Of the 613 million people who flew on major US carriers in 2015, 46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%.
They all wanna do it but they don't wanna be caught doing it.
Because some people don't turn up. The End.
That's the beginning and the end of this conversation.
The only way to get airlines to stop doing it is to make it unprofitable to do so either through fines and/or regulations which increase the compensation for those bumped from flights to the point where it's not worth it to do.
It may be less than 0.008% but it's still forty six thousand human beings.
#DeleteFacebook
Tits. Thats how. Big fat tits.
... "money" ...?
I am willingly admitting that I missed my flight once. But no one at China Airlines made any fuss about it and I was a happy man traveling on the next available flight.
Flying is an awful experience these days because market drives price optimization above anything else. A lot of it is driven by "find cheapest" aggregators and "you must fly cheapest" corporate policies. This is actually not in the best interest of consumers. Actually, vast majority of consumers would be better off with slightly more expensive but consumer-focused service.
Security theater at the airports, outrageous fees, cramped seats, inadequate cleaning between flights. Why would anyone fly unless they absolutely had to?
United should be fined hugely for this, the four removed should sue. The staff involved fired, the execs making that policy fired.
But nothing will happen, i normally fly them, but will look elsewhere.
an Overbooking issue.
If you want to talk about Airlines feeling they can manhandle passengers out of their seats - great, I think it needs to be discussed so airlines understand that wasn't acceptable.
But, I think everybody here understands why airlines overbook, so don't bother explaining.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
To be clear, the guy was NOT dragged off the United flight because it was overbooked. Rather, United decided at the last minute that they wanted some of their employees to use the flight to travel to another airport, so they started kicking seated passengers off the plane to make room.
Overbooking incidents are resolved at check-in counters. This is an incident of someone being removed from a plane to make way for employees. Not only is this not overbooking, but it's also a mindbogglingly dickish move by an airline to de-board someone already sitting and expecting to reach their destination, even more dickish that it wasn't voluntary at all.
I really wish I could boycot United, but as have already done so for years there's not much more I can do. Frankly these types of incidents only seem to happen with one carrier over and over again.
Last time I checked in at a KLM service desk they told me they were overbooked and they gave me the choice of flying 30min later and paid me €200 for my troubles. Quite a different response then "these people will need to get off the plane to make space for an employee of ours".
United should be fined hugely for this, the four removed should sue. The staff involved fired, the execs making that policy fired.
But nothing will happen, i normally fly them, but will look elsewhere.
Yes and it seems many others here are blindly commenting and don't understand what actually happened. This wasn't an overbooking scenario. This was a scenario where passengers had been cleared, boarded and seated. Then another flight crew needed to board to make a flight for the next day. No one volunteered, so they played Hunger Games with the passengers. One of the ones selected was a Dr that had patients to see in the morning and thus his refusal.
United Airlines then turned in to President Snow and had a 69 year old man beaten and drug, yes, drug, (not carried as some outfits want to say), off the plane over it.
United could have easily booked this crew later or sent them by other means. They chose to violently remove a 69 year old man like he was brandishing a weapon or threatening people.
So, people carrying on about overbooking can get bent as that's not what happened. This wasn't denial of boarding. It was violent eviction.
United is going to end up paying for this event, one way or another.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
They will rip you off at every opportunity.
You would be better off walking.
And good luck with those bonus miles!
http://68.media.tumblr.com/4fa222d3312330f26b6b96ac6a81504f/tumblr_oo7nhpiU2B1qz6f9yo1_500.jpg
Cut and dried, really.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
It should be noted that airlines will only oversbook a non-refundable seat/ticket.
A successful overbook is one where a seat is sold to two people and one of them does not show up. In this situation, the seat is paid for twice but only used once. This is free money for the airlines.
An unsuccessful overbook is where a seat is sold twice and they both show up. The second person to check in is not assigned a seat number and told they will get one at the gate. The airline then waits to see if another seat becomes available.
They play a very careful game with this. They have to make sure the number of successful "free money" overbooks exceeds the cost of paying out incentives for voluntary givebacks.
In the case of involuntary givebacks, they also weigh the cost of losing goodwill and reputation.
All of this having been said, the United flight earlier this week was not overbooked. United had a scheduling snafu and needed to move a crew. The cost of not moving that crew was the opportunity cost of a cancelled flight, so there was NO CHOICE but to move the crew. They just made a poor "random" choice of who to boot from the flight involuntarily. In addition to willfully interfering with the rendering of medical care, they also willfully endangered the lives of any of the Doctor's patients who were at risk without his care.
The passenger should have notified the airline he was a doctor at check in, because airlines will not remove a doctor from a flight if they know ahead of time.
Statistics (and the 'free' market) are so... communist... Fuck the individual, right?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Empty seats" in the sense of the article are already profitable for the Airline, as someone has payed for the seat but didn't show. They don't "cost the airline money" except in the sense that they are a revenue opportunity to sell the seats of no-shows a second time.
Perhaps airlines should be forced to refund tickets if they manage to resell the seat - which given the way their pricing works they invariable do at a higher price anyway.
When the Supply is lower than the demand, prices go up. Overbooking may seem like it costs airlines a bit of money, but this is nothing compared to having one less plane in the overhead column.
This way they sell two tickets, occasionally have to reduce their profit margin on one of the two tickets (but still remain well in the black with it), and create this illusion that price hikes are in order since they simply can't keep up. Makes people less furious about the next surcharge, again.
"Empty seats cost airlines money" not if those seats are already paid for. This total BS. If the seat is paid for then less weight saves them money. Overbooking is pure greed. They know the average percentage of people who will miss the flight and they overbook to make more money but sometimes the people do not miss the flight and they do not have enough seats. It is pure greed and lies. If I have paid for a seat it should not be theirs to sell again as what they normally do is just get more strict about the check in time to reject people if they are going to have a problem. You arrive at check in a minute late (I was rejected 3 minutes late once) and they get hard arsed because they already have someone sitting in your seat. They have sold it and made money from something they had already sold to you.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Greed, the same reason the hotels do it. If they want to continue this practice they should no longer be able to use terms like "reservation" to sell you tickets/rooms. Obviously, they aren't reserving anything for you. Also, they should be required to provide an alternate solution of equal or greater value that has the same result (not late) even if that means providing a flight on another airline at their expense.
And in Spain they waterboard you.
In what was was the Doctor who refused to deplane offering any security risk? So why was Aviation Security involved?
It must be profitable even after compensating every one that they bump.
Actually, TFA is a bit off if they're referring to the United Airlines incident, since it wasn't simple overbooking (which would mean passengers would be denied at the gate). In that case it was four UA aircrew that needed to get a flight at the last minute, and UA decided that they needed someone to be voluntold off the plane itself.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I had a flight that was extremely late and arrived at my "guaranteed" hotel about 5am. Figured since it ws paid for I should at least shower. They told me they didn't have a room for me. when I said it was guaranteed they replied they typically sold 110% of their rooms every night during season. they gave me the choice of a refund or finding me a room somewhere else. I negotiated the refund and use of their pool locker room to grab a shower.
The fair and most capitalist thing to do would be for the airline to simply have an in-cabin auction for your seat - have the captain announce higher and higher prices for your seat, and the first four call buttons to get pressed win the auction. (first N call buttons if a different number of seats than 4 are needed)
Thrown in a business class upgrade and I'm sure it wouldn't take long to get a few empty economy seats, and everyone's happy.
and dragged him off the plane should be fired and blacklisted from any job of authority or security, if they are not smart enough to think for themselves that beating up an innocent old man is wrong then they dont need to be in that line of work,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm thinking that selling a person something and then taking it away because you sold too many of said something, AFTER, the person has already taken possession of the whatever is either fraud (because you knew going in this might happen) or theft (because the person already has aforementioned whatever). Sounds like criminal chargers are in order for United Airlines.
P.S. Don't fly United, they are truly awful. Done that before, won't be doing it again.
They did, the bidding stopped at $1,000/seat (in airline credit I assume).
Ken
United Airlines Flight 3411 is NOT a United Airlines flight. The U.S. government allows mis-labeling. Flight 3411 is a CommutAir flight.
United's CEO Oscar Munoz made the situation FAR worse by the pretend caring in what he said: United is investigating why authorities dragged a passenger off a flight -- here's what it found.
Quotes from the CEO:
"... we approached one of these passengers to explain apologetically that he was being denied boarding..."
It was not "apologetic". The passenger was already boarded. There was no "we".
"Our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers..."
They could have tried asking someone else, and increased the price they would pay.
To employees: "I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right."
That badly worded sentence also shows a lack of social ability.
The incident was like a billion-dollar advertisement saying, "Don't fly United Airlines." A New York Times story, United Airlines Passenger Is Dragged From an Overbooked Flight, now has 4983 comments! (07:48 am PDT)
The issue was not connected with anything United Airlines did. The result, however, is that the United Airlines CEO demonstrated that he isn't a good choice to lead a company. In my opinion, the United Airlines Board of Directors should consider getting a new CEO.
Background information: When airlines overbook a flight, these federal rules apply.
What else are you going to do, drive to Europe? Take a 20 hour cab ride to your meeting in New York?
At [airline] we have you by the nuts, so fuck you.
A google maps search suggests one can drive Chicago -> Louisville in under 5 hours. Was the crew needed before the following morning? United could have hired a driver for them and avoided all this (or they could have put the displaced passengers in a car with some money and still had them in Louisville before the next flight would have gotten them there).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Agreed. Gp is a luzer
When I read a story like this on Slashdot, I expect to see comments by people who are insightful enough to understand the mathematics of booking passengers on flights.
I also enjoy seeing ACs post stupid comments so I can feel superior to them.
And the law actually requires a minimum of $1,350 refund for the seat if forced off. The guy was still in the right to refuse to give up his seat at any price lower than that, and the Chicago police helped United Airlines violate Federal Law.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If a theater sold 650 tickets to a show at a theater that holds 500 that would be fraud. If a 30 table resteraunt takes 60 reservations for tables at the exact same time that's fraud, but somehow an airline selling 200 tickets on a 175 seat plane is ok???
This flight was not actually overbooked, you fucking nitwit. He was bumped to make room for company employees.
That's what coach tickets get you. You should fly first class if you don't like it.
I've never flown standby, so I'm not completely sure how it works, but I think it's a model that makes more sense.
Let's say a plane has 100 seats. The airline knows on average there will be 4% no-shows. What if, instead of selling 104 tickets at full-price, they sold 100 tickets at full-price, and 4 at a discount? Those people with the discounted tickets would usually get to fly, but would understand they might get bumped.
Once past the last gate into the plane, that seat is locked. If you deboard anyone it should be unlawful. You only request/ask politely on the airplane speaker if anyone wants to go later.
He was upgraded to a security risk.
They were crew for a flight that would be cancelled if they weren't there. What this is, in addition to a PR foulup, is a logistics screwup. The crew should have been booked on a flight already.
Best Slashdot Co
And the law actually requires a minimum of $1,350 refund for the seat if forced off.
Maximum is 4x the cost of seat or 1350
The guy was still in the right to refuse to give up his seat at any price lower than that
The whole flight declined the lower offers. When he was forced off, he was presumably going to get the amount required by law. But staying on that flight was worth more than the money - and even being dragged off the plane shouldn't result in a concussion.
Whichever is lower
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why should they negotiate when they can just throw you off of their airplane?
They own it, and your ticket purchase should indicate what happens when they refuse service.
If he wanted a guaranteed seat, he should have gotten onto his own plane. Don't have one? Then contract one.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uniteds-stock-is-set-to-fall-5-and-wipe-1-billion-off-the-airlines-market-cap-2017-04-11
$800 million / 3.72% drop in 2 hours after the New York Stock Exchange opened today. I suspect this is only the start and will continue dropping the remainder of the week. How much would it have cost to avoid this incident, a few thousand dollars?
I suspect the Board of Directors will be meeting and making some significant changes to company policies shortly. In this case it doesn't matter who is "right" or "wrong", its about damage control. Good luck to them.
Plus, to add insult to injury, they branded him a "disruptive" passenger after the fact to justify it. Until a computer decreed he should be removed and he refused (with good reason), he could not be described as such.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Airlines shouldn't be allowed to ask for name/ID. You read that right. I should be able to anonymously buy plane tickets. It's none of their business where I go and if I actually take the plane myself or give the ticket to someone else. There are security concerns, but the government/airport security handle this part. I have no problem with the government knowing that I am flying (so they can check I am not a terrorist/whatever) but I should never have to present an ID to an airline employee.
So since the ticket should be mine, there would be no overbooking since I could sell the ticket on eBay myself if I can't board the flight.
Yes and it seems many others here are blindly commenting and don't understand what actually happened. This wasn't an overbooking scenario. This was a scenario where passengers had been cleared, boarded and seated. Then another flight crew needed to board to make a flight for the next day. No one volunteered, so they played Hunger Games with the passengers.
It's still an overbooked scenario whether the passengers were paying or not. Though I do think they should have handled this scenario differently, such as providing ground transportation for their own employees, there were still too few seats for the number of passengers.
One of the ones selected was a Dr that had patients to see in the morning and thus his refusal.
Absolutely irrelevant. As we all know, Delta canceled thousands of flights between Wednesday and Sunday. Had he flown Delta, he probably would not have had a plane to get onto at all. And the fact that he is allegedly a doctor with patients? So what. They have on-call doctors to handle this situation. He is no more important than an elementary school kid who has class the next day.
United Airlines then turned in to President Snow and had a 69 year old man beaten and drug, yes, drug, (not carried as some outfits want to say), off the plane over it.
Once he was asked to deplane, he was guilty of criminal trespass. Even if he IS a doctor, if he were at a hospital and the hospital said "Hey get out of our facility" he would be required to leave. The police could still come in there and drag him out if they need to. The man broke the law at this point and I have zero sympathy for him being removed by force. He is lucky he did not spend his Monday morning waiting for the county judge instead of seeing his alleged patients.
United could have easily booked this crew later or sent them by other means.
I agree with you completely. Though this man could have also made the 4 hour drive to Louisville if he really felt that the need was that urgent. Instead he played the "I'm more important than every other passenger on this plane" card and wanted them to make someone else deplane. He's a douche and United did not display proper customer service.
They chose to violently remove a 69 year old man like he was brandishing a weapon or threatening people.
As I've stated before, you'll get violently removed from a hospital or any other location if you're trespassing and do not comply with police instructions.
So, people carrying on about overbooking can get bent as that's not what happened. This wasn't denial of boarding.
You are incorrect. There is a legal definition for denial of boarding and this case falls under that legal definition.
It was violent eviction.
It was the police enforcing criminal trespass laws.
United is going to end up paying for this event, one way or another.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
The local law enforcement do say that the officer did not follow proper procedure and did suspend him, yes.
Right now the rebooking fees and cancellation fees are so atrocious, people whose plans change simply abandon the ticket. If the government declares these abandoned seats as "lost, unclaimed or abandoned property", then the airlines have to send the fare they had collected to the State. This will make the airlines reduce the cancellation fees to make it worthwhile for people to actually cancel their tickets. And this will definitely reduce their profits, from status quo. But status quo encourages them to abuse it without any restraint.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Obviously the airline handled this poorly. Having said that:
> telling a plane full of people that your convenience as the company who took their money is more important than theirs is colossally stupid. ...
> The only possible acceptable answer for **someone** in the decision making chain to have made there was "our customers come before us".
The crew was needed to fly another plane with 500 customers on it. So the airline's choice was between these two:
A) Inconvenience four passengers on this flight, by rescheduling them on the next flight.
B) Greatly inconvenience 500 passengers on the other flight - and they won't all fit on the next flight out.
Customers of the airline were best served by getting four of them off that flight, though that should have been done by offering them $1,200 each. (I understand three people took the offer at $800, they needed one more.)
The airline was not overbooked. All passengers had seats. Due to a management issue 4 airline crew had to inserted into the flight. It was bad management planning that either had not reserved the seats for crew movement or had the crew in the wrong place.
The airline needed to move the crew as they were need on another plane that would depart from the destination.
This was not overbooking. Either the airline needs to leave seats open all the time for crew movement or it needs to better plan crew movement to not interfere with paying passengers. This was not an operating issue with the flight so captains orders to remove the passenger were not valid. This was purely a management snafu. And management tried to fix their problem by bumping paying passengers.
Sounds like they're trying to have it both ways.
They would lose a lot of revenue from empty seats if they absolutely had to guarantee a seat to everyone who bought a ticket.
They would gain a lot of revenue if they overbooked and then -- in the 0.01% of cases where the overbooked passenger showed up -- they got a passenger to give up the seat by auction, for as much as it cost.
Since it only happens 0.01% of the time, and they save a lot of revenue by overbooking, they would still come out ahead if they auctioned it for whatever it costs. For $10,000, they'd almost certainly find somebody. http://heelsfirsttravel.boardi... Hell, you could take a cab from Chicago to Louisville for $10,000.
But United cut off the bidding at $1,000, and then called the Chicago cops, who are trained in de-escalation (just kidding).
It's like what the gambling casinos do when a really good poker player comes in and wins a lot of money. They say, "You misunderstood. This is just a game. We're not really playing poker for high stakes (unless you're losing)." And they kick him out and bar him from casinos ever again.
Or it's like what the insurance companies do when your house burns down. They say, "We only collect money. We don't like to give money back. It's in the fine print in your contract."
And this is where it gets interesting to me, and is worthy of a /. post.
If indeed they overbooked the flight by 4 seats, AND they had the plane full, asking for volunteers, and indeed got 3 volunteers, this is all over one passenger, already in their seat.
What would United be gaining by removing a passenger from a seat to grant passage to another? A single passenger is that valuable to them? Really? Why?
I get that overbooking makes money - some of the 5 digit /. users here will recognize the parallel with oversubscribing any data service, you make your money on the 60-90% of the time the service isn't congested, balancing that with pain and subscriber loss. For an ISP, this is de rigueur.
But for this instance, this is clearly NOT just about filling seats, rather there is something else going on. United wanted another passenger in that seat. Why? Loyalty member? Crew being shuttled? Executive? A favor?
So is anyone asking about this? Will we get an answer?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The airlines need to be more thoughtful in forced bumping.
When a flight is overbooked, and everybody wants to get home instead of taking a bribe,
the first folks thrown off need to be the ones that paid the most.
Bump First Class first.
That would make the airlines more thoughtful in doing this.
I bet you could get bi-partisian support in Congress for that?
It was NOT a United Airlines flight.
But the cost to United is HUGE: United's stock is falling 3.7% and wiping $830 million off the airline's market cap.
As the first link shows, United handled the situation badly.
The "other means" would have cost the airline actual cash, the $1,000 airline credit/seat is essentially free.
It is a four hour drive (Chicago to Kentucky) - United should have hired a stretch limo to drive them the four hours to the KY airport, then the four hour return drive empty for less than $1,000.
Ken
While a lot of what you said is correct, it appears that flight 3411 is actually a Republic Airline flight. And really, it appears it's not so much a mis-labeling as it is outsourcing/contracting. United is correct in sharing the blame for this in choosing to partner with them.
This was the last flight of the night (on United at least). The next flight was the next afternoon. United probably couldn't have booked the crew on another flight, but they could have offered the passengers compensation and a limousine, since the flight is only 300 miles, and the Google maps estimate of trip time is about four and a half hours.
United should pay for this, but they only do if we (all) change our behavior and they can feel it.
Could the FAA step in and create regulation preventing an airline from ejecting an already cleared and boarded passenger, unless:
- volunteering for another flight, with compensation
- life threatening situation
Sure it comes down to the decision of the pilot, but there should be a culture of customer service and if the paying customer is getting shafted then there is a problem. It shouldn't matter that they are in 'cattle class'.
Clearly staff shouldn't have been treated as VIPs and the screw up happened because people had already been allowed to board.
I hope this passenger gets more than just a flight home as compensation, since the way he was abused should never been permitted. I am thinking of an all expenses trip to Hawaii?
BTW with the attitude of the current administration towards any form of regulation, I am not too optimistic that the FAA will do the right thing.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Bucko? I feel like the Fonz is about to walk in, elbow the jukebox and two cute girls will appear, one on each arm.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The market drives price optimization above anything else because that's what customers prioritize above anything else. If people didn't care about saving a few bucks on a plane seat ($5 * 130 pax = cost of an extra seat), airlines wouldn't need to overbook. But because they will buy from a different airline if the fare is $5 cheaper, airlines have to play the overbooking game to reduce the fare a tiny bit more.
Markets are like computers. They do exactly what people want. The problem you're citing comes about because of a mismatch between what people say they want, and their actual behavior. Not because of a problem with the market. Everyone says they want bigger seats, shorter lines, "free" checked bags, better food, no bumping, but their purchasing behavior clearly indicates they'd rather save a few more bucks than have those things. The media listens to what people say, not what they do. The market doesn't care what people say, only what they do.
Security theater is mandated (and run by) the government, not the airlines. Outrageous fees were another cost-cutting move - to reduce the fares for customers who didn't need to check in a bag, or didn't want the in-flight meal service. Cramped seats are yet another way to reduce fares for people who don't want to pay a little extra for larger seats (Economy+). Inadequate cleaning is also a consequence of reduced fares - by reducing the turn-around time to the absolute minimum, the airline can get more miles out of its equipment each day, reducing operating expenses thus allowing lower fares. It all boils down to customers prioritizing ticket prices above all else (and a disproportionate fear of terrorism fed by the media which runs terrorism stories because they catch more eyeballs thus leading to more advertising revenue).
For 4000 dollars, they could have put all 4 employees on a chartered turboprop and had them in Louisville in 90 minutes.
Because it's a kick ass policy!!
This isn't about contract of carriage or the passenger's actions, this is about an obvious operational failure on the part of United Airlines.
What if Google kicked you off Gmail, because their employees needed the bandwidth?
What if Hilton kicked you out of a room at 1am because their staff needed a place to stay?
What if a restaurant asked you to leave in the middle of dinner because they forgot to schedule your waiter long enough?
What if a hospital kicked told you to leave your hospital bed because an employee was having elective surgery?
United FAILED at doing the one thing they are suppose to do. Fly people from place to place.
Because they have sufficient political power that they can commit fraud with impunity.
When I was a younger (and more importantly single) traveling consultant, I'd purposely book flights that I knew were generally overbooked and racked up travel vouchers in addition to miles. I did it often enough, a few gate agents knew what rate it would take to get me off and would just call me up by name. I meant getting home really late sometimes but I don't think I paid for a vacation for several years.
The problem with what happened with United wasn't overbooking. It was how they handled overbooking. They could have taken the seats at the gate for their people and decided who wouldn't board at the gate. But instead they let everyone board, let everyone sit down and THEN pulled out the "we need your seats" thing. THAT's the problem.
Or more specifically A problem because dragging someone out of the plane by their arms is ridiculous. He's not a sack of wheat. There were three dudes there and they couldn't grab his feet?
And that doesn't even touch the extreme escalation of violence visited upon a Doctor who had purchased a ticket and was already seated.
No they did many many things wrong on this flight but overbooking doesn't even come close to being one of the major ones.
Just another second banana
Airlines overbook because people cancel, and they make more money if they run their planes full.
AKA "Profit"
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
How they're loosing money since you pay for your place when you book a seat??
Folks, there are a few important facts about this incident with Asian (Chinese?) doctor:
1. He was already boarded on the plane (along with everyone else) That suggest Airline poor management. Typically being denied boarding happens BEFORE you are on the plane. So once everyone was on board, that creates the possibility of using force. once force is an option, people are even more likely to use it in and with no restraint. Just like police forces in parts of the USA and Canada
2. Passengers are basically the are told they can be ejected "for any reason" that is way too much power. that needs federal restrictions on the cause. The Federal Government in Canada is preparing some new regulations to add the bill of rights right now (although I suspect it have token effectiveness at best without more public protects).
3. True to form with security forces in North America, the security officers were not well trained in unarmed confrontations. A well trained professional shouldn't be giving a non-combat trained doctor a bloody nose or knocking him out.
4. This is so out of control that some media (see Canadian Globe and Mail) feel free to suggest that paying extra fees will reduce your chances of being ejected. That is a dangerous possibility. suggest grey are blackmail potential and that possibility shouldn't be there. (There is no proof but it has been suggest this doctor and the other 3 were chose because they paid less).
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
Want this potential abuse and cause exercise in ejection to stop? Write to your Seneator (in the USA), or government representative in your country. China seems to be making the biggest impact because the people are showing their outrage. Perhaps it's time we did the same and get all the airlines on a leash. The security offer who was suspended is only a symptom of the philosophy which lead to the problem in the first place.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I was standing in line for a flight once and they announced that they would give $1000 to anyone who would bump until the next day. I was so tired that I decided to not volunteer. On a later flight, they offered $500 and I volunteered. They put me into an adjacent lobby. While I was sitting there, I noticed someone else walk up to the counter and speak to the agent. They told him to go sit down also. After a couple of minutes, they called my back to tel me that they wouldn't need me anymore and I could board the current flight. What happened here was the other guy went up and underbid me. So now instead of being at the front of the boarding line, I was at the very end of the line and got a lousy seat (seats were not assigned). Never again. I think I suspected something like this would happen with the $1000 offer and that was the reason I didn't bite.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Security and police are just about never f*cked. The first rule of a police state is that you don't throw the police under the bus. They may get bad press but where the rubber meets the road, or perhaps I should say where the baton meets the suspect, they still have free rein. Virtually all suspensions result in a slap on the wrist are are in effect paid vacations.
They keep mentioning he's a doctor as though that gives him more rights. I'm not a doctor, but I'd be just as upset if I were told to get off the plan in such circumstances. Doctor or not, United is in the wrong here.
As for the article, it has a wrong conclusion saying "if you face security then just comply or you get a fat lip". Well, everyone complying is the reason the police shoot unarmed people on the streets, passengers get dragged off the plane after paying full price for the ticket and so on. Compliance is not the way to deal with assholes like United.
We have a simple implied contract:
I give you the amount of money you stipulate as a fare for travel from A to B starting at a specific time.
In the absence of uncontrollable exigent circumstances, you carry me from A to B starting at or very close to that time.
Being kicked off because of a deliberate overbooking policy or a bureacratic screw-up in aircrew accommodation is simple breach of contract.
And it should be up to a civil law proceeding to determine the value of compensation due.
If government has set max compensation (at the ridiculously low levels that they have), that's just evidence of a corrupt government system that works for large corporations via lobbyists. Americans really should fix that.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
THIS. Overbooking is not unique to airlines. Hotels do and car rentals do it too. Cancellations and no-shows are inevitable, so overbooking is used to offset that, and sometimes the dice roll badly and you have to bump people from their airline seat or hotel room. It happens.
The problem here is not the overbooking. Like the parent said the problem is actual a customer service failure, or we are missing half the story. There is no reason to violently remove a passenger because of overbooking alone. A good response would be to offer and upgrade to a customer who is willing to be bumped voluntarily, and keep upping it until someone takes it, or put your 4 employees on another flight. One or more people handled the situation badly and it escalated from there.
It says technically it was in United's right to remove the man. No, there are at least 3 parts of contract law that not only make this illegal, but another part that makes this a criminal offense.
Just because airlines and the TSA constantly break the law, does not make it their right.
Federal courts are constantly towing out FBI cases because of criminal acts FBI officers commit to get evidence.
For some reason airlines, the TSA and private guards that have no more legal power than you, or I are being treated like they are above the law.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Are they subcontracting the flight, or is the leg with a partner airline?
For 4000 dollars, they could have put all 4 employees on a chartered turboprop and had them in Louisville in 90 minutes.
For the amount of the resulting lawsuit or settlement they could have bought a Gulfstream to fly the 4 employees to anywhere.
The tech news part of this story is that the United computer system actually has a function for "click here to randomly select N passengers to boot off".
Or an armrest to the face and $5M from the settlement after the video makes the nightly news.
Which it did.
Let free market capitalism do its thing.
You don't want to give up your seat for $1000? OK, make it 1500. 2000. 2500....
Watch how fast those filled seats open up.
However, government (because it enriches cronies and the airlines were the cronies in this case) placed a limit on the compensation.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
I think the former statement answers your question. They'll say "We asked Aviation Security to remove the passenger in accordance with our policies that he agreed to when purchasing the ticket, and they screwed it up. Not our fault."
No Chinese will fly united now.
"Of the 613 million people who flew on major US carriers in 2015, 46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%."
What that leaves out are all the people who were bumped or weren't allowed on the plane but accepted a voucher because they "volunteered". Don't you just LOVE Newspeak? Orwell nailed it...
That's (A) inconvenience four passengers - and compensate them. The airline did that for the first three of four seats needed, I understand. They offered $800 and three people took the offer. They manner in which they handled the fourth passenger was obviously not very good.
United is proud to offer their new Thunderdome fare class. They divide the cost of one ticket among as many people who dare book it, and then the prospective passengers fight to the death in a steel cage on the tarmac. On the positive side, if you do not get a seat on the plane, they will still allow your remains on the cargo hold as long as you submitted a notarized certificate to United's corporate office three days in advance.
EXACTLY!!!! An auction would have been the most sane way to do it. They could have done it in reverse. Just think, they could have started the bidding at $5k (or whatever the value of having their four people in the right place was), and then the people would work their way down from there. The lowest four bidders "win". The way they did it was stupid. The value of the four seats on the plane was clearly more than what they were offering. It was also "worth it" to risk bad PR in order to get those crew members where they were going. Now they will spend hundreds of thousands in PR, when they could have made 4 lucky "winners" very happy.
Exactly. Once the passengers are boarded, you can't deny them boarding (which is what the airline is authorized to do when they're overbooked), so the aviation security officers had no business being on that plane unless a passenger was posing a security risk. The airline is trying to suggest that the passenger became belligerent when asked to give up his seat, hence why security became involved, but reports from other passengers seem to indicate that other than refusing to deplane, everything was civil until the officers started shouting at him to get off the plane.
If the reason for removing him was because he was belligerent, but the reason he was belligerent was because they were trying to remove him, they have no leg to stand on, in much the same way that you can't (legally) arrest someone for resisting arrest. It's no surprise, then, that the department is throwing the officers under the bus, with at least one already being placed on leave pending an investigation, and the department making it clear that the officers acted contrary to standard operating procedures.
I wonder how much gets paid to people who come up with these neutered words?
"rendition" ==> kidnapping
"enhanced interrogation" ==> torture
"civil forfeiture" ==> theft
and now
"re-accommodation" ==> assault
Apparently the bidding was halted at $800, since the news reports don't tell of any higher offer prior to UA Express resorting to the computer random selection. This was a long simmering process failure, it should have been decided long before boarding time so that customers could be inconvenienced - aka reaccomodated - without their knowledge rather than be forced into a stalemated auction. The result would have been similar, four people would be pissed off to stay in Chi-town overnight, but no bloodshed would have been required.
Have a Day!
I don't fly and do look down on you.
Because your acquiescence makes it nearly impossible for me to fly, given my political convictions and medical issues. I could probably do it if I absolutely had to, but it would be highly stressful, painful, extremely demoralizing, and hypocritical.
The problem is all the masses of people who put up with shit. Look at the cowed passengers on that video while the guy is being dragged off by TERRORISTS.
Yes, supposedly all you brave passengers will now stand up to terrorists. Except the video don't lie - everybody sat there while the police terrorized and beat up an innocent civilian.
Someone on a reddit thread yesterday said that this happened to them, they were offered $600 to leave the plane. However when they did leave the plane, they discovered that the $600 was not actually CASH money but rather 12 $50 vouchers for air travel that could not be combined and expired one year from the date issued.
So yeah, people assume that this is all cash money being offered to the patrons but i bet it wasnt.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
As others pointed out, $1350 is the maximum, not the minimum, so I won't beat that dead horse. What no one else has commented on yet, however, is that you also got the next thing you said wrong: if you've been involuntarily denied boarding, you're (typically) not in the right by refusing to give up your seat.
In a normal case of someone being told they are being involuntarily denied boarding, the airline is required by law to immediately provide a document explaining the passenger's rights in plain language. That document makes it clear that regardless of whatever offers they had made up to that point, the passenger would still receive the amount required by law. As such, it makes no sense to try and hold out for more, given that no more would be coming. You'd already be getting the full amount the law provides.
That said, this was anything but a typical denial of boarding, given that boarding had already occurred, making it impossible for them to deny boarding at that point. As a result, his refusal actually does make sense, not because their offer was too low as you said, but rather because they were demanding something from him that they had no authority to demand.
250.2a Policy regarding denied boarding. In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily.
Obviously, IANAL, but reading the source code (the CFR), it appears they yanked this guy off to make room for flight crew. Do crew have a confirmed reserved space?
Oops, sorry. I meant to reply to Cajun Hell below.
The contract [with Unite Airlines], worth $2.1 billion, tasks the airline company with locating Assad, grabbing him from his seat in the presidential palace, and “dragging him out of Damascus by his arms.” The contract also notes that Assad should be “asked several times, politely” to give up his seat of power, though if he refuses, United workers should bloody his nose up a bit, according to the posting at FedBizOpps.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Did the gate agents handle the situation? The reporting of the incident is incomplete.
1) Class wars. The "rich", which may include your company, who agree to pay full fares and get little or no discounts are allowed to cancel up until just about the very last minute at no penalty or almost no penalty. I have a friend who owns his own business and he runs just about every charge he has through an airline credit card. This gives him some kind of super elite status with the airline in question and they allow him to book flights months in advance and cancel them with no penalty at all. He's a big fan of the NFL, so during the playoffs he booked flights for cities his favorite team might have to go to for a playoff game and he canceled the ones he didn't need. He didn't pay anything for the cancellations. Letting people do this leads to ...
2) Empty seats. Airlines want to avoid this. So they overbook to increase their chances of selling out flights.
The airlines are kind of stuck because letting people cancel for free or almost free is big part of why overbooking is needed, but if they punished people for doing that, people would likely take a harder line on price. Right now a minority of customers are willing to pay really high charges in exchange for free (or almost free) cancellations. The airlines depend on this money and it helps the rest of us pay less for our seats, although in exchange for a lower price we often get severe restrictions on changes.
The number of seats on a given aircraft is known in advance, and does not randomly change, especially not during 30-minute boarding phase. Overbooking situation is well known in advance, and extra passengers will never be let to board the plane.
All this overbooking talk is red herring.
What happened here is that the process failed, and someone decided that DHC must be boarded, *after* all the passengers were seated. That someone concluded that, in the current power pyramid, United can do that and get away with it, because passengers are worthless scum.
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx
Lots or slippery words, but it would be interesting to understand which rule they used to eject the passenger.
Section 21 looks applicable. 21C says anything not under their control is fair game, but this was under their control.
21J says they are not responsible if they follow their rules, but if they did not do this, can the guy now retire or get free air travel for life?
Which rule did they claim to use?
Not doubt, there are lawyers hoping he has not signed away their liability.
I hope some united pilot could comment.
As a private pilot I can tell you that it is not always the airlines fault. Depending on the weather conditions the airplane might not be able to carry all the passengers. In many airplanes, at high temperatures and pressure altitudes the FAA requirements for engine failure climb might not allow for a fully loaded airplane to take of. In such cases the airlines are not at fault and need to deplane people, or I have seen some airlines that remove luggage. For small, general aviation airplanes, you might need to remove fuel and go with the minimum legal reserve for take off or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjRPY4_XKy0
Here is the load and balance calculation that needs to be done for a typical airliner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qaASZCGdlg
Note that if the CG falls outside of envelop you cannot take off, or : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UllYdX5Nk1E
I plan to avoid United if possible, this is not acceptable
It's obvious why airlines overbook- it's a worthwhile gamble, given how frequently people can't make their flight.
But it's also obvious that if no one is taking them up on their compensation offers when the flight is overbooked, they aren't paying the social costs of their gamble, and so they're getting away with defrauding people.
The solution is obvious. Especially if people have already rightfully boarded the plane, they should only be removed voluntarily. Everyone on board turned down $800 compensation for missing the flight, but I'm sure somebody would have accepted $2,000 or less. If once in ten thousand flights nobody accepts an offer less than $20,000, the airline will just have to take that risk into account when they decide how much to overbook.
It doesn't take a great economist to come to this obvious conclusion; it was my immediate reaction and many others'. But I'll mention that a great economist has posted the same thing.
In this case, where it wasn't really overbooked but the airline needed to transport employees, already at $800 it's odd that they didn't just find another way to get one of their employees there (even by taxi).
but is it real random or psuedo random!?
It's the maximum compensation that the government can force them to pay to the complainant if a complaint goes to the government for resolution. They are not prohibited from paying more to avoid a complaint from going that far.
I used to work for Continental (pre United ... 2003-2005) and here's how I recall it all works to the best of my 12 year old memory of it all.
A given flight would have PBTs ... Passenger Boarding Totals. It broke down into Available Seats, Seats Sold and Maximum number of seats that can be sold. A given flight early in the AM might have 100 seats and they might be allowed to sell 120 seats where as a similar flight later in the day might have 100 seats and only be allowed to sell 105 or 110 seats. It's all based on data that predicts when people are more likely to not show up to a flight for any given reason. The goal is to send that flight off full at 100 seats. If 105 show up then 5 people are going to be bribed to volunteer to give up their seat and on rare occasion that no one will do the numbers dictate someone isn't going.
Then you got the stand by passengers (non revenue pass riders) ... there are employees, limited vendors, familites buddies, retires and so on. They can book beyond the maximum of seats because they don't count to that. They only get a seat if at the end of the day less people show up then seats available.
Then you have the positive space non revenue riders. These are people who are officially conducting company related business. Various policies and procedures govern this and some abuse happens here and there at management discretion. When I first came to the company I flew back and forth between DCA and IAH every week for 3 months on positive space non rev passes. Officially this was against policy (I was supposed to pay so much money a month and fly non-rev as a 'commuter' but my management chain allowed it.
Finally when traveling on a positive space pass you have the ability to declare "must ride" status. In that scenario it's as if you are a paying customer and you are no longer standby. You better have a pretty good reason for it though because a full "Y" fare is going to be charged back to your department and your manager / director / VP is going to want to know what gives. Good reasons exist like hey I need to courier this part to fix a plan or I need to get to that city so that plan full of 200 people can depart on time. It kinda sucks but it's a Spock needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
It would seem that this flight wasn't "overbooked" in the classical sense more that they had a bunch of must rides suddenly show up that caused the overbooking. That simply can't be predicted ahead of time.
That said, the practice of getting the police involved and do what they did is completely repulsive to me. United should be ashamed on this one IMO.
As for that girl that was denied boarding for what she was wearing... get over it. That's the terms she agree to when she got that pass. I knew the rules and I knew it was responsibility to make sure my guests knew to follow them and to never embarrass me. United should get slack on that one IMO.
Make me wonder though. Lets say you bought a business class ticket to Hong Kong from the US. It costs 8 grand. So now the airline then pulls you off the flight due to "overbooking" and put you on another flight that gets to Hong Kong within 2 hours or so. They give you 675 bucks but they put you in COACH. So coach would be 1300 cost, so now the airline just made 6 grand and can overbook all the business/First class flights they wish to do so.
So they can? pull you from a higher class and put you in a lower class seat.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
46,000 people is a LOT of people.
Here are the actual statistics. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s...
If it's such a small percentage, you'd think they could have auctioned off the seat before calling security. There aren't many cases, in my life, where I wouldn't have taken $2'000 for a 1-day delay. It's an airline. Just stand there and raise the award until someone says yes.
I'm sure the time-delay to call security cost the airline more than $2K.
This wasn't an overbooked flight, it was the airline wanting to transport its employees on a flight where all seats were taken by paying passengers. Auctioning seats may be "capitalist", but the only course of action that measures up to the standard of "fair" is for the airline to bend over and take the consequences of going short staffed at the destination where the employees were needed.
They shed $600,000,000 in market capitalization because of this. They coukd have bought a 787 filled with exotic pets, champagne, and prostitutes and flown it around the country on a marketing tour.
Require them to buy passengers off. If overbooking remains profitable after that, fine. If it doesn't, great.
People like to live more than they like to suddenly and inexplicably die.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I'm, well, aghast, at United. It seems that they missed so much. Did they analyze what other options they had to get the crew where they needed them? The flight was delayed something like 3 hours by this; it's only a 5 hour drive. There are probably alternative carriers. They could have raised the offer until they had enough volunteers (that is the "free market" capitalist way). Once they had randomly selected people, the next stage is to *ask* them if they have reasons why they should not be bumped (and a doctor with patients waiting is a decent reason). Even if they go ahead with the doctor, they could and should have got to impasse "sir, this plane is not leaving the gate with you on board; you are merely holding up all the other passengers". Once they had dragged him off the plane, don't dig in deeper with a statement from the CEO: apologize, admit fault. He knows, as well as everyone else, that this was not the way to behave, and lying ("the person was belligerent", when it's clear from the video that they passively resisted) just rubs salt in. Which suggests to me that the corporate culture is deeply tainted, and the CEO, and quite a few in the middle, need to go. Bad choice after bad choice after bad choice.
drug, yes, drug
No, dragged.
We are falling for the airlines propaganda to say the airlines overbook....they actually oversell, they sell seats they don't have.
It's also false to say they lose money on empty seats. Airlines make people prepay for what they falsely claim is a reservation. They keep your money if you don't show up, yet they still sell your seat to someone else, and then they pocket that money too. That's double dipping.
Just imagine if a restaurant or a concert venue acted like that.
fucking click bait bullshit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> The PTL Club's fund-raising activities between 1984â"1987 underwent scrutiny
> by The Charlotte Observer newspaper, eventually leading to criminal charges
> against Jim Bakker. From 1984 to 1987, Bakker and his PTL associates sold
> $1,000 "lifetime memberships," which entitled buyers to a three-night stay
> annually at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA. According to the prosecution at
> Bakker's later fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships had been sold,
> but only one 500-room hotel was ever completed. Bakker sold more
> "exclusive partnerships" than could be accommodated, while raising more
> than twice the money needed to build the actual hotel.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Most seats in economy class are nonrefundable. So you don't show up, you loose the money, not the airline.
So they are basically "empty seats make airlines twice the money" if they overbook.
From TFA:
USA Today reports that the flight was not overbooked. United Airlines staff wanted to fly and apparently United Airlines chose staff over their customers:
Also, contrary to the entry currently pinned to the top of United Airlines' twitter.com feed from United CEO Oscar Munoz which looks sympathetic, "The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments", he told staff a completely different story:
This would seem to answer the question the BBC pairs with their apparently hastily-drawn conclusion: "How did it all go so wrong?": It went wrong because United Airlines flight crew favored United Airlines staff over paying customers. None of the 4 customers asked to give up their seats should have been asked to give up their seat. Stop letting staff have privilege to fly at the expense of paying customers, apparently going so far as to assault customers. Stop taking the company's side of events seriously: Dr. David Dao, the customer dragged off of United flight 3411, wasn't "disruptive" or "belligerent". Even while being dragged, the video (easily found online) shows the worst he did was to say no (along with other passengers who saw him being dragged past them), which is completely understandable. Staff can coordinate their flight schedule, reserve a ticket, and board the plane just like everybody else apparently boarded flight 3411.
Contrary to Munoz's words in the letter, I sense United Airlines is now looking for new flight crew and a new CEO, assuming they're able to survive as a company (which I'm not sure they should be allowed to because I think we can all do with one less business that physically assaults their customers; we should make room for a professionally run airline that won't instill fear when company representatives ask customers to do something like an preflight offer for deplaning). This also connects very clearly to why employees need more power in the businesses they work for—apparently you can't trust some of your colleagues or high-ranking management to make the right call. This certainly gives anyone, worldwide, pause to consider what power one is giving others when one agrees to fly on their plane (this got violent even without the plane taking off!).
Digital Citizen
So he was bumped for company employees. It still creates no story worth reporting on /.
Anyone still flying United simply doesn't learn. It's not like this is the first time they prove that service is something they might do to their planes but not their customers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To determine the amount of overbooking, one would need to know the total amount of people who could not use their originally booked flight ... ... that way, they could more or less auction off seats on the flight ... just make the airline increase the payment they offer until the required number of passengers agree to postpone their flight ... yes it will be more expensive for the airline, but at the moment the airline is the only one that has advantages out of the current system (apart from possibly lower fairs)
Anyway, the reason for over-booking is understandable (and also makes sense from more than just the economic PoV), but airlines should be forced to NOT involuntarily deny transport to passengers
For 4000 dollars, they could have put all 4 employees on a chartered turboprop and had them in Louisville in 90 minutes.
For the amount of the resulting lawsuit or settlement they could have bought a Gulfstream to fly the 4 employees to anywhere.
For the drop in share price United wore the day after, they could have bought each employee a Gulfstream and still finished ahead...
Hello,
I assert that overbooking is not only illegal in the US, but highly so.
If my ticket money doesn't buy me a seat on the flight, and that seat can go to someone else for whatever reason, then I submit that the whole procedure constitutes an illegal lottery. I am simply buying the _chance_ that I might get the seat I paid for. I'll grant that my odds are decent, but that doesn't change the underlying principle.
Obviously, IANAL, but am instead an entirely unhinged idealist :). Nevertheless, I wondered if anyone else has thought to fight this utterly objectionable behavior on that basis.
Probably based on number of miles the person has flown with them during the last year(s).
I fly in mostly in europe and with KLM i have never been booted of a plane, but i do fly alot... I usually get bumped up to business whenever economy or economy comfort has been full and no one else have more frequent flyer miles than me..
Overbooking on airlines seems to be a Catch 22 situation.
Airlines overbook because a certain percentage of passengers just do not show up and request refunds. ( The refund insurance is usually relatively inexpensive.)
Because the Airlines overbook, a certain percentage of passengers make more than one reservation for a flight to avoid being bounced from a flight and having a delay in arriving at their destination. This results in the airlines experiencing a higher rate of empty seats (usually) and therefore they over book at a higher percentage.
That being said, there should never, outside of something like a National Emergency, be a reason to kick a paying customer off a plane for a non-paying one. Standby is Standby- if the seats are filled then there are no available seats - seems like logic to me.
I see no trolling here.
https://vine.co/v/OiZnwVpMbUg
This wasn’t a case of overbooking. This was a case of the United Airlines resource-scheduling department needing to get a flight crew to another airport ASAP. And, the cause for that could have been anything (e.g. weather delays resulting in flight crews being on duty for too long and being forced to layover, rather than being able to complete a leg they originally had been scheduled to fly).
However, to answer the question posed Airlines overbook because some routes, at some times, experience cancellations and no-shows. While the airlines can recoup most of their losses through cancellation or change fees, they can also make more money by putting another paying passenger in that seat.
So, the answer to the question is simple: airlines, like all large corporations, are run by greedy sociopaths. Executives don’t see their customers as sentient beings worthy of respect and dignity. They see them as resources to be exploited for profit. Any damage done to the resource is just the cost of doing business and factored into the profit forecast.
"Overbooking on flights happens all the time".... errrr not in reasonable countries it doesn't. In reasonable countries we call that fraud.....
We all know that airlines overbook planes.
But still, selling a plane seat to two people is like selling a house to two families, It's criminal fraud and somebody should be locked up!
So there's no confusion let me start by saying there's no excuse for the WAY this man was treated.
However unless you've worked (or know someone who has worked) for the airlines it is easy to misunderstand the reason for the situation. The airlines and particularly the employees that work a flight have strict restrictions on how long they can work and how much minimum rest they are required to have before work. It is possible that this flight crew really did NEED to be on THAT flight in order to meet all the minimum requirements set forth by law. So the math of disrupting 4 people on a flight VS EVERYONE on another flight is really easy.
Ever wonder how the first flight of the day could be delayed when the weather is fine? If it isn't a problem with the aircraft it is probably that a delay from the night before cause the crew to arrive late, and they need a minimum amount of rest before they can come back to work.
Further information on the operations of airlines:
Planes breakdown, rather than letting one leg of a route disrupt the entire route aircraft get repurposed, and in rare cases flown empty.
Crew members get sick in the middle of a route
Weather and Onboard emergencies cause aircraft to reroute
Weather causes more fuel to be consumed than first calculated
Customs, 'nuf said
Government Requisition
With so much out of the control of an airline they need to have the flexibility to ask people to leave in order to operate. If not they'll just charge more per seat and cancel whole flights instead of taking a handful of seats.
Whitewashing this based on statistics is bullshit!
ANY percentage still hurts somebody. ESPECIALLY when there is a far more reasonable solution:
1) Don't overbook, and; 2) Don't refund missed seats, and; 3) Last minute empty seats can be resold to standby passengers for the same rate originally sold.
Airlines OBVIOUSLY overbook with the HOPES of executing the more expensive tickets.
If seat 7A sells for $400, then re-sells at $500, the airline will opt to bump the $400 seat.
It is a crime against humanity to make people suffer over a corporate entity bottom line. PERIOD!
This is stranger than fiction. We must not be getting the whole story.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Because fuck you, that's why.
He has to hope united doesn't take it to court.
So they can enjoy the fun of THROWING people off a plane even though they paid for that seat: http://www.newser.com/story/24... http://www.newser.com/story/24...