It is in violation of United's contract with the ticketed passengers (CofC). To say that they "can do what it likes" is silly. They "can," as having the ability, but "may" they?" No. United contracted with Dr. Dao and all of the other passengers, and United's actions are in conflict with that contract.

Just because airlines have been pulling this bovine scatology for decades doesn't make it legal or right.

I think that overbooking due to no-shows is easy. If you bought the ticket and never made it to the airport you eat the ticket. The issue comes when the no-shows are due to missed connections because of airline or weather delays that are not the PAX fault. There will always be a certain number of these, and the airlines can't just void the tickets in those cases. A no-show will result along with the need to accommodate the customer on a later flight. I believe this was the original justification for over-booking.

That remains to be seen.

And a court (if unable to settle) may decide to award punitive damages (often not insurable - it varies) in addition to compensatory damages (insurable).

Other than citing the basis of claims for injuries suffered, the lead lawyer on today's news conference (see above) was well spoken, speculative in his facts and self serving.

That kind of puts a squash on an impartial jury of citizens

I think United's CEO, along with an overwhelming social media and the 24/7 news cycle, let that horse out of the barn days ago. :E

Agreed!

All the lawyers for the family have to do now is present the facts.

According to today's press conference, Dr Dao lost two front teeth, has a broken nose and a significant concussion and damage to his sinuses that will require reconstructive surgery.

United passenger dragged off flight will file lawsuit, lawyer says - CNN.com

You also file a complaint of blackmail against the airline employees just to annoy...Because they were demanding that you allow breach of contract under threat.

Sure there is. The business model (and therefore the low ticket prices that attract customers) is dependent upon selling at a load factor of, (say for example) 110%. If regulation forces this back to 100%, then that's (approximately, given different prices for different classes of service) a 10% gut punch to top-line revenue.

This could easily turn into a class action suit. The attorneys only have to put out the word that they are looking for passengers who were illegally bumped in violation of the CoCs. If bumping has been regularly used to handle last minute re-positioning of crews (in violation of CoCs) a class is formed. This could get very expensive for United.

Had this passenger done as you suggest, then nobody would have heard of the incident, and, although he might personally have received adequate compensation in court, the underlying problems would never have been addressed.

Rosa Parks could have just complied and moved to the back of the bus, too.

Fixing pernicious institutional abuse often requires a considerable level of disobedience, often at considerable personal sacrifice to the individuals who are willing to stand up for everyone's rights.

Agree entirely.
This has the potential to rewrite the rules for passenger management by the US airline industry.
The deadline imho for United to settle this is April 20th, when their responses to the Senate committee are due. If the case is still dragging on at that point, politicians will make the rules different. It will take industry some time to adjust to whatever changes are required, so a period on uncertainty.
Wall Street does not reward uncertainty.

For some grossly oversimplified numbers:
100 seat airplane. $100 per ticket. 5% oversell. $10,500 in revenue for the flight. 99.5% of the time, nobody gets bumped. 0.5% of the time, airline offers $200 and gets a volunteer. $10,400 on average net revenue for the flight.

Forbid overbooking. Now there's only $10,000 revenue for the flight. That $400 is coming out of the pockets of either the shareholders or the passengers. The airline has the pricing power, so the 4% is coming out of the passenger's pocket.

Given my own personal history (I've never been involuntarily bumped, and I've been delighted to volunteer in return for a $500 voucher when my schedule permitted), I'm unwilling to pay an extra 4% for my ticket to eliminate the practice of overbooking.

The attorney made it clear at the press conference that they were only going to be representing Dr Dao, and that there was no intention of initiating a class action.

That doesn't preclude a separate action by other United passengers, of course.

I'm also Ok with the practice of over-booking and voluntary compensation. The customer can make a choice that is market driven. When a lottery is held for involuntary "re-accommodation" the amount IMHO needs to be much larger. It can easily cost me (or my employer) far more than the $800 voucher (I also contend the voucher is inadequate in any amount) if I don't make it to my destination on time. If I lose this money due to Force Majure that is one thing. To do so because of someone I've contracted with to provide me with transportation has reneged on their end of the contract is not the same. In that case the payment must be proportional to the damage.

Airlines must learn lessons from safety and commercial problems in their own and other airlines.

In this case clearly the problem of the airline. At the point of forced offloading that the airline allowed to become
violent, there was either a policy that allowed such serious actions, there was insufficient policy or none. Hard to
visualise a fault other than the airline.

The solutions include
Immediately compensate pax and not proceed with criminal prosecution
Publish overbooking and full offloading procedure including D/H crew

Of course all safety and commercial policies need review.

The class action will come after the courts decide that the practice of bumping paying passengers in favor of DH crew is in violation of the CoCs.

Good, that should help!

slats11,
“Puny-Wrap” Insurance
Since the early 90s, Bermuda-based insurance carriers have also offered policyholders a separate stand-alone policy to protect against awards for punitive damages where the domestic "wrapped" liability policy is otherwise prohibited from providing punitive damages coverage due to public policy, statutory, or regulatory considerations. The policy is offered on an indemnification basis and is triggered by a judgment in a court of law.

This coverage would come into play big time for an airline, lets say, where there is a major tragedy due to negligence by employees or management.

However, in this instance it isn't a loss resulting from a domestic crash resulting in the deaths of hundreds of victims.

It is this consideration as to why I believe United will do their very best to settle ASAP with all parties concerned and avoid going to court. They are a large corporation and should be able to reach an agreed upon settlement with the Doctor and or other passengers should there be a class action suit. United needs to get out of the limelight as quickly as possible, objective #1...

Nobody is obliged to accept a voucher in lieu of cash.

No - you cannot deplane anybody you want. You need to have lawful reason, and if United did not then they deserve everything that comes their way. And if you participate in this screw up of policy and process, you are perpetuating this. It is exactly this type of blind stupid thinking that has led us to this terrible situation. And show me the evidence of any tempter tantrum before the security guy initiated a full on aggravated assault. If politely declining to be involuntarily removed from an allocated seat once taken is a temper tantrum, you do not belong up front.

For several years after the two-hour CVR recording rule went into effect (after opposition from ALPA and the Regional Airline Association) our manuals still had the boilerplate phrase about a 30 minute recording.

And, I thought engines had to be running or at least the beacon needed to be on for the CVR to record but it turns out, on some planes at least, it runs whenever there is power on the aircraft. It's solid state so there is no tape to wear out, but still, this was news to me.

The PSA CRJ-200 overrun into the EMAS at CRW in 2010 had the crew doing a shutdown checklist but getting interrupted by communications before they could pull the CVR breaker. The NTSB CVR transcript has a call to the union rep and other conversation that in the past would be deemed 'non-pertinent' or privileged. As with the Comair crash at LEX, these guys were shucking and jiving and not maintaining a sterile cockpit on taxi out so that initial part of the recording is definitely relevant to the mishap. But, the harvesting of conversation about commuting, fatigue and other stuff we talk about up front seems to me to be increasing in the NTSB's recent airline accident reports.

If anything is found on the CVR in this ORD case, will it be admissible in a lawsuit proceeding? :confused: I don't claim to know.

David at post 808
 

A noshow is money in the bank and less fuel burn.
You know that.
Why are some overbooking. Greed and a marginal industry. And cods running the companys.

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

Its not some, its every airline that is successful enough to have full aircraft, it is standard practice throughout the industry. The only ones who don't overbook are those that don't have enough passengers to do it.

So how does this routine overbooking work then?


When you buy a ticket, or if you don't want to pay the couple of quid extra it's when you check in a week ahead of travel, you choose your seat from amongst those that nobody else has chosen.


Do airlines which routinely overbook allocate the same seat to two passengers then? The online system which is showing you which seats on your flight are still free is simply lying?

Not necessarily true.

An empty seat is less fuel burn, I accept that.

It's also, potentially, an opportunity cost rather than money in the bank.

Airlines, historically, have tended not to penalise premium-fare passengers who don't show up for their booked flight by allowing them to move their reservation to a later one with no penalty. Sometimes the unused seat can be filled by a waitlisted passenger, sometimes it can't.

So, in effect, that passenger's fare may end up having bought two seats, one of which goes to waste, or reduces the revenue potential of the other flight, depending on how you look at it.

Of course if you're flying aft of the divider, the above probably won't apply and it's "use it or lose it". But to argue that noshows never impact on the bottom line simply isn't true.

And the airlines clearly agree, otherwise they wouldn't overbook.

See the part for Involuntary bumping or Boarding
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/con...age.aspx#sec25
it is part of the Contract of Carriage
Also here in DOT or Transportaion.gov. for USA
https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights

The (aviation) lawyer talking on the live broadcast, if you didn't see, did make a clear firm statement about how the captain was the one in charge. He joined this up by saying the CEO had then been smart in accepting responsibility. A warning?

The passenger had already boarded. UA cannot simply remove people for doing nothing wrong. The passenger was not compromising safety or security. The only party that compromised passengers safety was United.

JetBlue proclaims that it does not overbook. According to this analysis, while that's technically true, in practice they end up with a lot of IDBs. Their fleet is mixed A320/A321, and when a flight originally scheduled for an A321 has an A320 substituted, the airline is short a lot of seats.
For an Airline That Doesn?t Overbook, JetBlue Sure is Bumping a Lot of Travelers | Cranky Flier

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.

Not sure if this has been posted before, but it seems to be that United don't really care about their customers.

United Airlines staff 'forced frail grandma, 94, out of £2,800 Business seat into Economy for 16-hour flight'

It's not nearly that simple.

I go to book a flight from point A to point B next Tuesday. The fare would be $500. The airline doesn't sell me a ticket because the flight is fully booked and they're no longer allowed to oversell. Meanwhile, someone else holding a ticket no-shows, and the aircraft dispatches with an empty seat. The airline is now:

• Down $500 in lost ticket sales.
• Up $X in reduced fuel burn
• Down $Y in lost loyalty; because I couldn't get my seat I try their competitor, and might like them and make the switch.
• Up $Z in reduced risk of having to deal with a voluntary or involuntary denied boarding payout.

Where $Z, it turns out, is in the millions, so none of the other numbers matter.

$Z is *potentially* in the millions. $Z is a very very small probability of a very very big number, probably quite a bit smaller than any of the others.

What has been determined from the last couple of weeks is that United really do not deserve to have any customers, there has been story after story emerging of similar incidents of bumping pax against their will with threats of arrest and violence.


Just some of the cases that have emerged in recent days:
United Airlines staff 'forced frail grandma, 94, out of £2,800 Business seat into Economy for 16-hour flight' - Mirror Online


https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ings-passenger


After United fiasco, more complaints of reportedly rough treatment emerge | NJ.com


'Get off or pay for another seat.' United customers share their bad experiences - LA Times


Are UA still a great airline?

"Data" is not the plural of "Anecdote"

Of course this story is going to flush out other United-specific stories.

We can't tell from these stories whether United is worse than, better than, or about the same as the other big carriers.

Not sure this is true. The no-show has paid for the seat and is unlikely to be refunded. The airline still has 100% income.
They then sell that seat to a standby passenger and have 105% income

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 .

I am sorry but overbooking just does not make any sense at all to me.
The stupidity of bumping 10% of your pax onto another flight does not save money, you still have to fly them AND you give them compensation.

No it isn't. No they aren't.