Originally Posted by
SeenItAll
What are the facts here?
- UA Express had a 70 seat plane that they needed to fit 74 people on.
- UA tried to get 4 people to give up seats, but $800 to $1000 didn't succeed
- Instead of bidding higher, UA decided to use IDB to reduce the load. (Note that in retrospect, I am sure that if UA could do things over, it would decide to have continued the auction rather than go to IDB -- but hindsight is 20/20).
- One pax that drew the short straw adamantly refused to leave the plane (note that it matters not a wit from a legal perspective that he was already on the plane. If the CoC says he can be denied a seat on the flight, it doesn't matter whether he has passed through the BP scanner yet or not. Note, I have seen people get on fully-booked planes who then find that their seat is broken. They have to leave the plane and hope the agent can find someone willing to give up a seat. Being already on the plane means nothing for the process.)
- The police that removed the gentleman from the plane were heavy-handed. But his refusal to cooperate only made the situation worse. (note, that if he was in the legal right about being able to fly, his far better path would have been to leave the plane under verbal protest, and then sue in civil court for breach of CoC. Acting uncooperatively only hurts his subsequent legal position)
- Finally, one can Google "airline X bumped me from flight" and find examples of this type of instance occurring for every major airline, because they all have pretty much the same CoC. The only important differences in this case were the crude behavior of the police and the belligerent response by the unlucky pax. No party here is completely blameless.
United's CoC says "denied boarding." He already boarded. Just because UAL has been violating their own CoC for years doesn't make it right.
Police can not arrest for torts (civil issues) on an airline. To do so makes them an unlawful agent for the airline.
Good luck in court, UAL, but they will settle for 6-7 figures with a confidentiality agreement without admitting that they did anything wrong.
Then they will do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat.