Passenger Forcibly Removed From Overbooked UA Flight

[get me outta here]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

He seemed to be travelling with a woman, so if 3 of the 4 went willingly, they then selected a pax who was part of a couple ... This gets more bizarre.

They were offering that - reportedly got to US$800 plus accom.. but no-one took it (probably similar SYD-MEL at 9pm on a Sun night) so they went to random selection.

Three of four went without issue.. One complained and refused for 10min, then security and police were called

 

[Quickstatus]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

The aircraft was not overbooked. Just United wanting to fit 4 crew onto the flight after the flight was boarded. United's fault entirely.
All overbooking is the fault of the airline. The airline wants to play a game to maximise revenue (and at the same time giving the excuse that it lowers fares). The contract of carriage is completely constructed in favour of the airline.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

This didnt have to end this way....



.... and now a police officers career is on hold as hes been put on leave/pending investigation.

And in future perhaps the police might say 'United, this is a contractual issue, we can't intervene here, it's for you to sort it out'.

 

[ajw373]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

If that is the attitude of the CEO we should all make an effort to ensure this never happens again by not flying United.

As far as I am concerned once I have my bum on that seat there would want to be a very good reason why I would be asked to leave and 4 crew rocking up after boarding is not a good enough reason. Far far far from it. And to call this overbooking is to me a lie. It was incompetence pure and simple.

 

[Dr Ralph]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

$800+US to get off the plane? Just take the money!

 

[OzEire]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

As I understand it the 4 crew who boarded after the incident were verbally abused by other pax for what happened.

While I do not condone the actions of United in escalating so far, the deadheading crew did NOT deserve to cop abuse for poor decisions made by others in their company.

A bit of perspective on all sides would have helped quite a lot.

 

[ICUDr]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

I find other pax opinion on this interesting.

Because he said he was a doctor, pax seem to be more "Oh, this is terrible. Stop doing this".

But in the past, when its been unknown job/black/female, its been more "Get off the plane, youre holding the plane up", with lots of giggles.

Unless the guy was performing heart surgery the next day, I would be concerned about my allegedly health care professional behaving this way. Its a 5hr drive, much better driving it than looking like this much of a fool.

We don't have enough information to judge both parts except that things escalated from bad to horrible.

Is really rare for doctors to call in sick or fail to show up and attend to their patients ( I can only comment about Australia tho) I have called in sick once in 5 years and because I had influenza. If you don't show up there is a very limited amount of colleagues who can do your job or are accredited in the specific hospital. This is even more difficult in highly specialised areas.

I had to play that card once. QF cancelled my flight and they, very kindly, booked me with Virgin to flight into Brisbane. This was necessary because the patients in question were coming down to BNE from Bundaberg. Unfortunately I didn't earn SCs on either flight "chuckles"

But then I agree with you, his behaviour wasn't the best example of professionalism. Although this Dr probably could quote Viktor Frank when he said: "An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior"

 

[get me outta here]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

The US pax probably knew that could just as easily be them, and that if one UA rep can do it, they all can. Yes, emotions ran high I'd say. Fear does that to people. Voicing concern should not become abuse.

As I understand it the 4 crew who boarded after the incident were verbally abused by other pax for what happened.

While I do not condone the actions of United in escalating so far, the deadheading crew did NOT deserve to cop abuse for poor decisions made by others in their company.

A bit of perspective on all sides would have helped quite a lot.

 

[Quickstatus]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

I can understand why they were abused.
Ordinarily no passenger can front up to the gate and demand that another passenger be offloaded even forcibly if required to accomodate him/her. But the actions of the crew/ aided by police just so some off duty crew can get on is not just. So yes on the one level the passengers remaining were voicing their displeasure at who they perceive were the instigators of the whole situation.

I would call it passenger protests. If the crew feel they were unfairly targeted they I would suggest they have no insight.

 

[opusman]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

QF cancelled my flight and they, very kindly, booked me with Virgin to flight into Brisbane. ... Unfortunately I didn't earn SCs on either flight "chuckles"

Probably too late now, but for future reference - after the fact, simply email [email protected] and ask for "Original Routing Credit" and you will usually get your SCs without a fuss.

 

[ICUDr]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

Great advice. Thanks!

 

[Spacetravel]

A passanger was asked to leave an overbooked flight. He refused so police and security boarded the plane and removed him.

While the article may not have the whole story, on face value this seems pretty bad... I would be horrified if I was asked to leave a flight I had already boarded.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...off-battered-and-limp/?utm_term=.630720ceb47e

 

[opusman]

Already being discussed here: http://www.australianfrequentflyer....forcibly-removed-united-overbooked-82242.html

 

[andyhui01]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

Just read more over lunch. Up to the point of the Email from United CEO, I don't really blame United. This situation probably happens on a daily basis (probably not after all the pax has boarded but at the boarding gate), it is just one of those rare cases where not 1 of 200 pax was willing to give up the seat.

Standby crew gets 90 or 120 mins to get to the airport. Boarding agents should have been made aware of this before boarding even began. Much easier to "force" someone to not board the plane than to offload them.

 

[juddles]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

.... the pax refused to follow airline and three police directions did it become a hot mess and now a police officers career is on hold as hes been put on leave/pending investigation...

Unless I have not read the full story, this incident does NOT involve any police.

 

[get me outta here]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

One video I saw there were three big blokes with Police written on the shirts.

 

[Quickstatus]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

Before boarding a flight can be overbooked. After boarding the flight is no longer overbooked.

 

[njba]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

Unless I have not read the full story, this incident does NOT involve any police.

Not police proper, but agents of 'chicago department of aviation police', which is apparently a separate law enforcement agency from the chicago police department. Still arguably police however.

 

[Skyring]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

Mistakes made. I am sure that running an airline is a complex business and not everybody gets everything right. So yeah, I think we can all say in hindsight what should have been done, but it didn't happen that way, and I guess there were time pressures and stress on all sides ramping up.

Maybe the airline can argue the rulebook and say they did nothing wrong and the police/security folk were a bit heavyhanded. Looks to me like the chaps in uniforms did the usual thinskinned police thing about not wanting to backdown on a confrontation. At the point where force was used, the thing slipped out of control. Other pax filming, social media going viral and hey, now people like us across the globe are dissecting the event.

I suspect that the airline would have been happy to do almost anything else than drag a skinny, bleeding, upset doctor travelling to take care of the sick, off the flight in front of dozens of passengers all with their phones out.

What concerns me is that the passengers were selected "at random". Nothing to do with safety, nothing to do with anything any particular passenger had done but comply with the rules, purchase their ticket, board the plane and sit down in their assigned seat. He was asked to go and he refused several times, giving what sounds to me like a good reason for wanting to make the flight.

It is a little rich for United's CEO to claim that he became "increasingly disruptive and belligerent". Poke anyone with a stick enough times and they'll lose their cool.

That passenger could be any one of us. If we have a wedding, a job interview, a sick elderly relative or some other time-critical reason for flying, are we going to be compliant with a random request to leave our seat when we have done nothing wrong?

Provoking someone until they become upset is very poor behaviour. The airline CEO's response, when he was surely given a full briefing of the event and after watching some of the social media things, is appalling. He wasn't making any decisions on the spur of the moment, and he was essentially condoning the violence used by the airport cop.

In Trump's America, sending a message seems to be the thing. The message being sent to passengers is "do everything right, and we'll still beat the cough out of you".

 

[jb747]

Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight

It's interesting reading some of your responses. We don't know the full story by any means.

But, needing to move a crew at short notice happens. I've even seen aircraft, that have already departed the gate, brought back to pick up some crew that were in a 'must fly' situation. Invariably that means that if they don't get to where they are going, there will be subsequent cancellations of one (or more) services. Same really applies to the comments about driving them to their next port. If they have to operate, that will be part of their duty time, and will almost certainly result in the duty being curtailed.

They were not necessarily a standby crew, nor was there necessarily plenty of notice. They may have just finished a flight, and been planning on going home, when grabbed for another duty elsewhere. That could be forced by any number of factors.

I'm sure it could have been handled better. But, once he outright refused the crew instruction, he simply wasn't going to fly. Digging heals in never works well in any situation.