USA Today: UA forcibly remove random pax from flight
The no-show has paid for the seat and is unlikely to be refunded. The airline still has 100% income.
Overbooking is a very complex art and if practiced correctly (usually by computer forecasting models that are specific to each and every flight) then the flight leaves close to full, with no denied boarding. I know of several routes where one must apply a 15-20% overbooking ratio and the flight will still departs with some empty seats.
Low cost airlines do not overbook, because their fare rules do not permit any change, and revenue truly stays with the airline on that particular flight even if the passenger elects not to fly.
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Work the arithmetic of my example again.
100 seat airplane. $500 tickets, all non-refundable. Sell 101 of them. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,500
Same 100 seat airplane. Sell only 100 tickets. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,000
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Originally Posted by noflynomore:
However once selected this person clearly refused a lawful instruction from the crew to disembark
Lawful instruction? This was a Civil matter, the passenger was no threat, and was minding his own business until the Airport security / police came to have him removed.
How many millions have United made on over-bookings, where Pax have not showed up?
This is part of the game of over-bookings, you win some, you loose some. In this case the simple solution would have been for United to keep upping their offer until they had enough takers to accommodate United's crew DH.
It is very interesting to know on what grounds the Airport security / police was called to resolve this situation.
Also unfortunately there are sometimes overzealous ground agents and cabin crew, who feel extremely empowered with their position. And many Captains give their full support to Cabin Crews observations without taking a to close look at the actual events going on in their aircraft when on the ground.
Specially for less experienced Captains, such a situation can easily runaway from them, if lacking communication, life experience and certain service orientated skills.
I have seen situations where overbooking happen and passenger and managed to come onboard, and everybody turned on the passenger, ground handling, security and cabin crew, I found this incident disturbing, considering he was flying on holiday with his family, and he was bumped of, taken of by the police of the aircraft.
The point was that the passenger did not have a leg to stand on, as everybody was watching their own back, and the easy solution was to blame the passenger.
However once selected this person clearly refused a lawful instruction from the crew to disembark
Lawful instruction? This was a Civil matter, the passenger was no threat, and was minding his own business until the Airport security / police came to have him removed.
How many millions have United made on over-bookings, where Pax have not showed up?
This is part of the game of over-bookings, you win some, you loose some. In this case the simple solution would have been for United to keep upping their offer until they had enough takers to accommodate United's crew DH.
It is very interesting to know on what grounds the Airport security / police was called to resolve this situation.
Also unfortunately there are sometimes overzealous ground agents and cabin crew, who feel extremely empowered with their position. And many Captains give their full support to Cabin Crews observations without taking a to close look at the actual events going on in their aircraft when on the ground.
Specially for less experienced Captains, such a situation can easily runaway from them, if lacking communication, life experience and certain service orientated skills.
I have seen situations where overbooking happen and passenger and managed to come onboard, and everybody turned on the passenger, ground handling, security and cabin crew, I found this incident disturbing, considering he was flying on holiday with his family, and he was bumped of, taken of by the police of the aircraft.
The point was that the passenger did not have a leg to stand on, as everybody was watching their own back, and the easy solution was to blame the passenger.
It's mildly depressing that here we are, nearly 40 years after the Airline Deregulation Act was passed, and we're seeing posts (presumably from professionals working in the industry) who don't seem to have a clue about the rationale for the practice of overbooking.
How hard is "it keeps fares lower" (or the corollary, "it keeps profits higher") to understand ?
How hard is "it keeps fares lower" (or the corollary, "it keeps profits higher") to understand ?
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As a loyal customer, would you not prefer to be told that the flight you wanted was full and you had that chance to make alternate arrangements or would you prefer to be sold a ticket which, when you get to the airport, you are told it will not be honoured . .
As a loyal customer, would you rather pay x% less for your ticket, in return for facing a y% chance that you'll be denied a seat due to overbooking plus the airline's inability to find volunteers? In 2016, looking at American, United, and Delta, your chance of being involuntarily denied boarding was somewhere around one in 20,000 flight segments flown.
By how much would you need to discount my ticket to make me happy with a 1 in 20,000 chance of being denied boarding? Certainly 25 cents to a buck would do it for me.
I'm not clear what "100% income" means.
Work the arithmetic of my example again.
100 seat airplane. $500 tickets, all non-refundable. Sell 101 of them. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,500
Same 100 seat airplane. Sell only 100 tickets. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,000
Work the arithmetic of my example again.
100 seat airplane. $500 tickets, all non-refundable. Sell 101 of them. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,500
Same 100 seat airplane. Sell only 100 tickets. One passenger no-shows. Revenue $50,000
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It's well established by research that people's risk preference curves are asymmetrical.
"Pay me $1, and enjoy a 1 in 1 million chance of winning $1,000,000." - statistically, the two sides are exactly equal in value, and yet nearly everyone would take the bet.
"I'll pay you $1, in return for which you risk a 1 in 1 million chance of me taking $1,000,000 from you, or, if you haven't got that, your house, your possessions, your retirement savings." Also statistically exactly equal in value, and yet hardly anyone would take the bet.
How much more would you be willing to pay for an air ticket, to take away what published statistics indicate is about a 1 in 90,000 (Delta) to 1 in 20,000 (United, American) chance of IDB?
"Pay me $1, and enjoy a 1 in 1 million chance of winning $1,000,000." - statistically, the two sides are exactly equal in value, and yet nearly everyone would take the bet.
"I'll pay you $1, in return for which you risk a 1 in 1 million chance of me taking $1,000,000 from you, or, if you haven't got that, your house, your possessions, your retirement savings." Also statistically exactly equal in value, and yet hardly anyone would take the bet.
How much more would you be willing to pay for an air ticket, to take away what published statistics indicate is about a 1 in 90,000 (Delta) to 1 in 20,000 (United, American) chance of IDB?
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Airbubba - The CVR on most Embraer EJets runs for a perpetual two hours the moment the aircraft is powered up. The vital stuff would have been obliterated before it even departed. Also, don't get me wrong, but if my goose was cooking I'd be sorely tempted to press the erase button before I left the aircraft.
And, since the current nonvolatile CVR recoding technology seems to be a form of flash memory, is the erase really secure or can some of the audio later be forensically recovered? I seem to recall reading an NTSB report with an earlier CVR that commented that technology existed to recover audio that had been overwritten up to seven times.
The NTSB has long advocated routine auditing of the CVR to confirm compliance with standard operating procedures. From discussions here and elsewhere I think some non-U.S. carriers have already been doing this for many years.
ALPA understandably is less than enthusiastic about this idea:
ALPA Voices Adamant Opposition to Cockpit Voice Recorder Monitoring
ALPA Members Can Help
March 2, 2010 - ALPA this week voiced its intense opposition to proposals to monitor cockpit voice recorders to the traveling public, federal regulators, and Capitol Hill.
ALPA Members Can Help
March 2, 2010 - ALPA this week voiced its intense opposition to proposals to monitor cockpit voice recorders to the traveling public, federal regulators, and Capitol Hill.
The operating pilots in the ORD incident are Teamsters, not ALPA, but if the CVR ends up in court in an action with the pilots as respondents it seems to me that the claimed privacy protection of the recorded cockpit communications will be eroded for us all.
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It's mildly depressing that here we are, nearly 40 years after the Airline Deregulation Act was passed, and we're seeing posts (presumably from professionals working in the industry) who don't seem to have a clue about the rationale for the practice of overbooking.
How hard is "it keeps fares lower" (or the corollary, "it keeps profits higher") to understand ?
How hard is "it keeps fares lower" (or the corollary, "it keeps profits higher") to understand ?
The facts are these:
- Pretty much every airline all over the world overbooks.
- Overbooking, because it increases revenue yield per flight, reduces average ticket prices so long as airlines face at least some competition from each other.
- Overbooking is just one of many reasons why passengers may have to give up their "confirmed" seat. And none of these reasons for why passengers may have to give up their seat disappears just because a passenger may have already passed through the boarding wicket and sat down on the plane.
- The Internet is replete with stories from pax on every major airline about how they were unjustifiably (in their own minds, anyway) denied boarding or carriage on the flight they had booked.
- What constitutes egregious mistreatment of pax is very broad. While what happened to this particular pax on this UA flight likely qualifies, some believe that every pax on loco carriers such as (fill in the name of your favourite bottom-feeding cattle-car operator) are egregiously mistreated. And there are an awful lot of them.
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Use of CVR
The CVR is an investigators tool to be used in flight safety investigations.
It is not a tool designed and implemented for judicial actions not related to safety of flight.
All industry wide workers, especially including pilots are expected to speak out against the expansion of the use of a CVR for purely civil tort actions
It is not a tool designed and implemented for judicial actions not related to safety of flight.
All industry wide workers, especially including pilots are expected to speak out against the expansion of the use of a CVR for purely civil tort actions
If there is an incident on the ground, for whatever reason, and I am injured, why shouldn't the contents of the CVR, if operational, be used?
I can't see the relevance of the CVR to this. All the protagonists are alive and there are plenty of witnesses. Overbooking also seems an entirely logical mechanism for commercial efficiency. Providing the carrier manages the situation properly, no reason to think that everyone can't end up content. The onus is on the carrier to manage. They certainly managed something in this circumstance.
Once boarded and seated there is an emotional difference. Now if you are selected the surprise factor is higher as you thought you were safe. You are also embarrassed as you know you are the loser, picked out of may be hundreds of people. Under their gaze you retrieve your stuff from the overhead and walk down that long aisle knowing the rest are thinking poor schmuck. Seems like a situation theat would better be avoided and one in which the emotional stakes have been raised unnecessarily.
Once boarded and seated there is an emotional difference. Now if you are selected the surprise factor is higher as you thought you were safe. You are also embarrassed as you know you are the loser, picked out of may be hundreds of people. Under their gaze you retrieve your stuff from the overhead and walk down that long aisle knowing the rest are thinking poor schmuck. Seems like a situation theat would better be avoided and one in which the emotional stakes have been raised unnecessarily.
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oldtora, I think you misunderstood the meaning of safe here. Safe as in I have taken my allocated seat as a fully booked passenger, therefore I don't expect to be bumped at this stage.
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oldtora
Even if he meets them merely half-way , and smiled , and said 'O.K. , now you owe me a different way to go home' , everyone would have improved their day
Even if he meets them merely half-way , and smiled , and said 'O.K. , now you owe me a different way to go home' , everyone would have improved their day
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UA lawyers must be having nightmares about the case going to trial and the jury awarding PUNITIVE damage in the hundreds of million of dollars.
(a good percentage of UA's last annual net income).
Munoz may be having nightmares about appearing in front of a Senate special committee and explaining calling the Doc "belligerent" and his thanking his people for going "Above and Beyond" (yes they went Above the law and beyond their scope) and being ridiculed for "re-accomodating" people.
If that happens he may be sacrificed by United, asked to quietly go or be told to GO!
(a good percentage of UA's last annual net income).
Munoz may be having nightmares about appearing in front of a Senate special committee and explaining calling the Doc "belligerent" and his thanking his people for going "Above and Beyond" (yes they went Above the law and beyond their scope) and being ridiculed for "re-accomodating" people.
If that happens he may be sacrificed by United, asked to quietly go or be told to GO!
I think the only relevance of the CVR in this case might be discussions on the flight deck pertaining to the summoning of the security folks, or the discussion of the aftermath. In either case I would argue that this goes beyond the charter of the CVR.
The people are available to ask, should it be deemed relevant and in any conversation there are at least two witnesses. I could understand the industry feelings against the relevance of the CVR.
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Actually, not everyone would have improved their day. There are passengers traveling today, tomorrow, and so on, who, had Dr. Dao quietly acquiesced, would have been abused by United, but now United will be a bit more careful about following the law and its own ToC.
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I have always flown United from LHR to Dulles, and then on to family scattered over the US on the regional airlines that go to the smaller cities. Service on the smaller aircraft like the Embraer involved in this incident can be limited. Cabin crew can be overworked.
As others have posted, the system of overbooking ensures maximum use of the fleet. Calling for volunteers to step off for suitable compensation is still the best way to cope if everybody does show up who booked for that flight.
Apparently three seated pax had volunteered to take another flight, and the good doctor also apparently volunteered, but his wife was traveling with him and he changed his mind. When the cabin crew asked the computer then to choose by lottery a fourth pax to step off the plane, Dr. Dao's name came up.
I also wonder if the computer preferred to select a "volunteer" who had no baggage in the hold....
As others have posted, the system of overbooking ensures maximum use of the fleet. Calling for volunteers to step off for suitable compensation is still the best way to cope if everybody does show up who booked for that flight.
Apparently three seated pax had volunteered to take another flight, and the good doctor also apparently volunteered, but his wife was traveling with him and he changed his mind. When the cabin crew asked the computer then to choose by lottery a fourth pax to step off the plane, Dr. Dao's name came up.
I also wonder if the computer preferred to select a "volunteer" who had no baggage in the hold....