Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
If someone comes on to your property, even if you invited them originally and you then decide actually, you want them to leave then they don't leave or they are committing trespass. From a purely legal standpoint, United had every right to offload the passenger.
Not when the relationship between the airline and the passenger is bound by a Contract of Carriage, they don't. Passengers have rights under the Contract of Carriage and those rights typically increase as certain threshold events - booking, payment, ticketing, check-in and boarding - are met. After check-in but before boarding United Airlines, by virtue of Rule 25 of the Contract of Carriage, have the right to deny boarding on an involuntary basis to passengers in cases of Overbooked Flights. However, once United accept boarding passes and allow passengers to board the flight their right to deny boarding on an involuntary basis is extinguished.
So, when United realised that they needed to deplane four passengers in order to get four of their own staff on board, they had no right under their own Contract of Carriage to do so on a involuntary basis. Rule 21 of the Contract of Carriage deals with Refusal of Transport and lists 8 very specific criteria by which United can refuse to carry a passenger; none of those criteria applied in this instance.
When the United Airlines ground staff member decided he was going to arbitrarily deplane four passengers on an involuntary basis he had no legal right to do so; he was breaching the Contract of Carriage. His direction to the passenger to get off the plane was both unreasonable and unlawful and the passenger was entirely within his rights to ignore the direction.