I guess US airlines have less regards for their Pax than in Europe. As I have seen the exact opposite happen, Crews been left behind.

This stinks bad management by the company, if you can't foresee this problem in advance than you should find another job.

UA in this case should have offered more money until they got the seats they needed. You can have a business man missing a million dollar deal because suddenly the airline decides they want his ticket back.

How will cover such consequential loss suffered by passengers how have paid their seat, and have been allowed to board?
As long as they follow the rules, that seat belongs to the passengers, otherwise airlines would not be offering money to get the seats back.

Regardless does not justify to remove an embarked passenger this barbaric way.

The good doctor choose the method of eviction. There's nothing magical about making it through L1. There's no absolute rights when you're on private property. He could have simply walked off, he made the decision to push to situation as far as he did.

UAL can't have it both ways, i.e. when things are rosey they take credit, but when things go down the crapper they can't say it wasn't their flight. :=

It says UNITED AIRLINES on the fuselage, not Republic Airlines (except in small letters next to the door).

NEVER
 

I am a 69 year old male who spent 50 years in aviation, much of it in the cockpit.

I still travel a fair bit for business and pleasure.

NEVER will I fly with United Airlines again.

Nope, it says 'UNITEDEXPRESS' on the side of N632RW. :=

Regardless of the paint on the aircraft and the fine print over the door, isn't this about the boarding process as handled by a UAL gate crew?

Were not the gate crew decisions made to accommodate a UAL deadheading crew?.

I don't see the plane operating crew in this but perhaps more will come out in a formal investigation.

After 50 years in the biz, ...
 

.... much of it in the cockpit I have one last trip from Canada to Austin, Texas on April 20th.

That will be my last trip to this totally :mad: up country.

At some point this mentally suspect individual was given a choice. Get off the plane or you will be removed. His injuries are the result of his choices. He obviously had never been taught to share as a kid and thought that his belligerence would be rewarded (as it obviously has been before). He might think twice in the future.

He doesn't have a legal right to stay on the aircraft. He was told to leave. It's pretty simple. Obviously the PR issues are significant but in the end you just have to be part of society and sometimes that means you don't always get what you want. Individuals need to be adults. This guy was just throwing a tantrum.

are you serious? this is the pax fault? so it's OK to assault your passengers?

I can't disagree. I was commenting on the previous poster's comments that this was a Republic Flight, not a UAL flight.

Mapquest lists this as a 5hr 13min drive. If upping the offer to take a later flight didn't get enough volunteers, then the airline could have had a driver drive the employees to their destination - driving wouldn't have taken much longer than the delay. Or they could have offered to drive the displaced passengers, or pay for rental cars. A lot of ways this could have been handled that would have resulted in far less bad publicity.

Then again, it could have been worse. This guy was a doctor. Imagine for a moment that he was a transplant doctor, and was rushing home because a heart had just been found for some child. Organs are only viable for a certain amount of time, and if the doctor was pulled off the flight.....

Unbelievable

Fair enough. United Express is owned by UAL. Note how the "Express" is faded to emphasis "United." The brand is United. OWN IT!

http://cdn.airplane-pictures.net/ima.../28/137944.jpg

What are the facts here?

1. UA Express had a 70 seat plane that they needed to fit 74 people on.
2. UA tried to get 4 people to give up seats, but $800 to $1000 didn't succeed
3. Instead of bidding higher, UA decided to use IDB to reduce the load. (Note that in retrospect, I am sure that if UA could do things over, it would decide to have continued the auction rather than go to IDB -- but hindsight is 20/20).
4. One pax that drew the short straw adamantly refused to leave the plane (note that it matters not a wit from a legal perspective that he was already on the plane. If the CoC says he can be denied a seat on the flight, it doesn't matter whether he has passed through the BP scanner yet or not. Note, I have seen people get on fully-booked planes who then find that their seat is broken. They have to leave the plane and hope the agent can find someone willing to give up a seat. Being already on the plane means nothing for the process.)
5. The police that removed the gentleman from the plane were heavy-handed. But his refusal to cooperate only made the situation worse. (note, that if he was in the legal right about being able to fly, his far better path would have been to leave the plane under verbal protest, and then sue in civil court for breach of CoC. Acting uncooperatively only hurts his subsequent legal position)
6. Finally, one can Google "airline X bumped me from flight" and find examples of this type of instance occurring for every major airline, because they all have pretty much the same CoC. The only important differences in this case were the crude behavior of the police and the belligerent response by the unlucky pax. No party here is completely blameless.

Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
 

Surely some sum short of $5,000 would have found a fourth volunteer.

The DH could have been put on another carrier, or a charter flight, but that might have cost more than $5,000.

If the doc had patients waiting for scheduled surgery, they can sue UA for delayed treatment and the hospital can sue for lost OR time.

United's CoC says "denied boarding." He already boarded. Just because UAL has been violating their own CoC for years doesn't make it right.

Police can not arrest for torts (civil issues) on an airline. To do so makes them an unlawful agent for the airline.

Good luck in court, UAL, but they will settle for 6-7 figures with a confidentiality agreement without admitting that they did anything wrong.

Then they will do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Really, are you serious? I've been on a UAL 727 overloaded at Denver. 6 of us were told to get off or the flight wouldn't leave. The initial offer was $200 with no overnight. I was asked and refused to get home to my daughters birth. 6 people volunteered for a free round trip ticket and overnight. This is nothing more the CHEAP!

Rather be flying

You do know that Airlines can't simply offer whatever they want, or whatever a pax wants?

people on this thread who are trying to justify this behavior by United (and to say that someone else did it is nit-picking) don't deserve to be in a service industry. Airlines exist because of their paying passengers: don't forget it!

there's a definite step change in COMPANY POLICY here.

It used to be "darn, everyone has turned up, what shall we do, we've entered into a paid contract, we need to convince someone to leave"

now it's

"We'll randomly pick people and kick them off the plane, yes "sir", that's not a euphemism, it could happen, I suggest you leave before we legally assault you"

What is of concern is its COMPANY POLICY to do this now, as confirmed in the email above.

"What? You're flying home to your mother's funeral, sorry "sir", company policy you see, right, someone assault him, quickly, we've not got time to waste"

Your seat is no longer your seat, they used to have to buy it back off you. They can now deplane you because they feel like it, through no fault of your own, is that really of no concern to people who choose to fly with them. It would concern me. Won't concern the sheeple, their planes are still overbooked today.