Originally Posted by Dave Reid
Originally Posted by
WingNut60 
It was not the last UA flight home on that day. There was a later flight but Dr Dao was not offered a seat on that later flight, though it seems that he would have been prepared to accept that as an offer.
But in fact, they did not offer him a seat on that later flight. Nor did they offer him a seat on the following morning's flight; nor on the mid/late morning flight.
Nor did they offer to get him on any competitor's flights - probably understandable, but it was an option; to try at least.
That is precisely why and when he dug his heels in. Which is also when UA decided to execute their perceived next-best option.
I was wondering about that, too.
United have 5 ORD-SDF flights most days.
Of course it may just have been that the intervening flights were full, but coincidentally (or not) only 2 of those 5 UAs (the flight the doctor was on and the afternoon one they wanted to bump him onto) are operated by Republic.
The other three are flown by different codeshare partners (1 x Skywest, 2 x Trans States).
Does anyone know if there could have been some revenue-related reason why United would have avoided giving him a seat on, say, the late evening flight ? If so, then we'd be looking at United's inflexibility having started off the whole farrago.
Having said that, even if there were no earlier seats available, it beggars belief that United clearly couldn't care less about the impact of delaying a passenger nearly 24 hours.
There have been numerous instances reported of passengers being bumped in the USA onto the "next flight" which turns out, once they are got out of the queue and over to the desk, to be one actually several flights away, at the point of low demand the following day. I, too, would find it unlikely that the next FIVE flights on United from Chicago to an obscure Kentucky destination (sorry if you are from Louisville) are all sold out up to 24 hours beforehand, because among other things USA yield management systems don't work that way.
Passengers told they are being put on the "next flight", in practice means the next one with availability at a low fare bucket, to minimise any revenue loss. Meanwhile, the intervening flights are still available to new bookers at higher fares.
I think there was a bit of a clue about this when Munoz (is he still supposedly 'in charge' ?), in one of his several, rambling, contradictory pronouncements, said that among other points of detail there would be a detailed review of the way in which rebookings of denied boarding passengers were handled.