Originally Posted by
DJ737
Agreed, being asked to do something by Airline, Security or the Police and refusing to comply isn't going to end well for the person concerned and not just in the US, The person concerned obviously failed the "attitude test" applied by the airline and/or the police.
Oh balderdash!
The policeman (or whatever he was) should first have established that the captain had a lawful reason to have the passenger removed. You can't just say to a passing policeman "these people in front of me in the queue won't let me pass - please forcefully remove them!".
United had no legal basis for removing the passenger, either under title 14-250 or under their own CoC. They claimed the flight was "Oversold", but it wasn't - it was just fully booked. Positioning flights by company aircrew don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seats so they weren't "Oversold" within the meaning of the regulation.
I do get it that they had a problem needing to deploy aircrew, but there were lots of ways to solve that and gratuitously throwing already-boarded passengers off an aeroplane (in violation of the title 14 regs and their own conditions of carriage) is frankly not a solution that any rational company should be considering.