The Captain is not legally in charge of the flight until the doors re shut. On the ground full responsibility lies with the Despatcher/Company Ops Dept.
No doubt we only have part of the story. Lets wait and see if the Doc wasn't perhaps the last person to book a seat - last on first off is a fair principle if no one volunteers to offload but it seems unlikely that on a transcontinental size aircraft they couldn't find people willing to volunteer.
Re the upset about it being to seat positioning company crew as though that was somehow unfair perhaps best to exercise brain for a moment and think why crew need to be positioned, and how many people may not fly at all if they don't...what is more important, 4 people bumped or 300 delayed a whole day or more? Go figure!
Shockingly badly managed no matter what the cause though. But why blame the airline for the heavyhandedness of "security"? They were hardly United employees were they? If the pax refused to walk off the plane then what are security supposed to do? Shake their heads and say let him stay there then? If they are asked to remove someone then that's what they'll do. Why does that come as a surprise to anyone?
There's plenty more to this than has been reported and though far from blameless I suspect United is taking a lot of flak that should be directed elsewhere.
Last edited by noflynomore; 11th Apr 2017 at 09:00.