What a lot of this debate highlights is just how enured people have become to airline "security" and how institutionalised some insiders are. When all is said and done the only justification for offering violence to a non-violent, perhaps difficult, even belligerent, individual is when the security of the aircraft, or the safety of others is compromised - period.

This was a commercial issue people.

The response of the United CEO is frankly breathtaking!

What was he thinking?

This is the point that I made earlier. The CoC states that UAL can "deny boarding," but this passenger had already boarded. Oh, those pesky little words in the fine print.

Oh, and the flight wasn't "overbooked." Those four employees weren't paying passengers, and thus weren't "booked" on the flight.

UAL is spinning this, and if the media would do their jobs, they would read the CoC and not take United's word for it.

In all fairness to the Chicago Police Department, these cops work for the Chicago Airport Police Department - a different agency.

I am still amazed that anyone, and there are many here who are, can justify violence against a 69 year old man. (Nothing to with him being non Caucasian I'm sure, just luck of the UAL random draw).

I'm not far behind him in age. Do I need to take up self defense classes before boarding UAL because I can guarantee I also would not blindly accept the same treatment from uniformed morons (wearing jeans!!!) either?

Several problems for UA and the Police
1. Flight was not oversold. UA need space for 4 crew members to reposition
2. Pax was only belligerent because his seat was being taken away from him
3. Police had no power of arrest for removing a pax to make space
4. Police used excessive force

I would expect UA stock to take a dive when then market opens this morning

Exactly. There are some posters here who subscribe to the "this is the way we have always done it." :=

Ironically does show how use of cell 'phones on aircraft can contribute to passenger safety!

Straight from the Harvard Business School, now, let's make a bad situation.......worse. Maybe tells you a lot about the kulture

Take a look at Twitter using the hashtags #United, #Flight3411 and #BoycottUnitedAirlines:D

Early days but their stock is down 3.5% at the moment. Of course share prices go up and down all the time a bit like passengers faces into armrests.

We are a few facts short here.

The over booking/boarding issue is one of them. Are you boarded when you pass the last gate, when you first touch the aircraft, cross its threshold or when your bum hits the seat. An airline might argue its when the aircraft departs with you. Overbooking - the seats available for sale does not equal the number of passengers that can be carried. There are many reasons for this an one of them is carrying crew. Deadheading crew reduce the number of seats available for sale and thus turn a fully booked aircraft into an over booked one.

Deadheading Crew do not pitch up at the gate and demand to fly on a whim. They are told by their Crewing Dept. to go to XYZ and the system has to deal with it.

Regarding who gets select to be offloaded; this is often done by algorithms in a booking system. Those considered to be of a lower commercial value with an airline will be chosen. Very harsh if you are chosen. Deadheading crew have the second highest priority on flights, the highest goes to engineers with tools traveling to fix broken aircraft. They will always be a carried, no matter what argument is put forward.

We don't have a clue what was said by whom and when. We do know this particular passenger has a strange reaction to stress. If this guy is a surgeon I hope he doesn't suffer with episodes such as this with an patient open on the table in front of him.

The customer service game is lost as soon as law enforcement officers show up. The deal with what they see in front of them and act accordingly.

Social media is not always fair. Clips, whilst accurate, may be taken out of context and be lacking the less newsworthy or story undermining build-up. Furthermore, to say a thing is right or wrong does not depend on onlookers shouting and screaming, it depends on the facts. But you can't delete posted social media. It's there forever (United breaks guitars). So even if you are right, your story may not be heard because social media will unfairly shout louder.

What was clear is that UA didn't allow an auction to take place. They relied on their CofC to give them a "legal" right to deny boarding. UA and every other airline might want to review their policies as every now and again a passenger unable to control themselves may be chosen and in return give you a very expensive PR headache.

When you pass the checkpoint at the gate your ticket becomes legally activated/used and you are boarded.

At 10am Eastern UAL stock was down 4.1%. Just for perspective, if it drops 4.4% that's 1 BILLION USD less market value of the company than yesterday.

United resurrected its "Fly the Friendly Skies" slogan in September 2013

It seems they make no promises when you're on the ground

United will throw the Chicago Airport Police under the bus in 5, 4, 3, 2...

I don't agree with you Less Hair. Your ticket, if you have one, is just a voucher or receipt that shows you have paid for a service and it remains valid until you have received the service you have paid for, provided all conditions etc. have been met. A reasonable person may consider the gate, but what if there isn't one, or the systems fail, or the flight returns etc.

Not sure about that. One "clarification" elsewhere on here says that five DH crew arrived at the gate and they DID offer an auction (on the plane, after boarding).

But as already covered (at length) previously in this thread neither the Title 14 regs nor the UA CoC gave them any rights in this case. Under the Title 14 regs DH crew needs don't qualify as "overselling" unless the seats had been boioked & confirmed in advance (which they hadn't, because the DH crew was only needed to cover delayed flights downroute). The UA CoC gives them no right to deny boarding to Pax that are already boarded.

If you want to try and convince a judge that a passenger who is on plane and buckled into his seat isn't yet "boarded" then go ahead and give it your best shot!

Advance of when? Close of flight, departure, close of check-in?

Great analysis! Spot on! :D

I saw an example of how to make a customer become "disruptive and belligerent".

Thoughts come to mind:

1) Boarding completed

2) Crew rostering wakes up to the fact they are short-staffed at SDF.

3) Let's make fools of ourselves by trying to entice boarded pax off the fully-boarded flight, to make room for the deadheading crew that we had overlooked until now.

4) Bidding for vacated seats fails. (Everyone has his price, but we haven't gotten there . . .)

5) Call in the enforcers. Mess up our corporate PR.

I've checked another operator's Conditions of Carriage. It makes no mention of when a passenger is boarded but Denial of Boarding is a term used by airlines to refuse a passenger travel. There are no time limits, for example, a passenger can pass the gate and be refused at the aircraft. They can be sat down and offloaded. A real buggers muddle and it appears, very expensive.

Well it would sure as heck be before the passengers were belted into their seats...

There are plenty of charter operators in ORD and environs. A chartered twin to transport deadheading crew to SDF would be a LOT cheaper than all the adverse publicity!

...and the availability of alternative transport for the aircrew is almost certainly going to make it worse in the eyes of a court...

Just a paying customer, albeit one with quite a lot of Customer Service background, and I'm frankly astonished at some of the attempted explanations / justifications for UAs actions here.

They messed up, then messed up some more. Then their CEO opened his mouth and made it worse. The he opened it again and made it much, much worse. He's slowly moving this from an embarrassment, to a crisis, to something that puts his job at risk to something that could put the whole airline at risk.

This should be really simple. You're a commercial organisation. Your customers come first. Especially when they're already sitting on the aircraft. If you discover that you have to move some of your own staff around, that's not your customers' problem, it's yours. Sure, offer a bribe to see if it will solve your problem, but if they won't bite, you have to sort it out yourself.

Your need to get your staff somewhere does not outweigh your customers' needs to get somewhere.

If you, as a provider of a customer service, think that you have the right to mandatorily - or even forcibly - remove a customer from a plane in these circumstances, you need to take a good hard look at yourself. Because you don't.

Oh, your CofC may say that you do, but who cares. We all know that CofCs are there for the sole purpose of limiting your liability in the event of a problem. No-one reads them because there's no point. What's going to happen if I decline the Terms? You won't sell me a seat. I need to travel, so I have no option but to accept.

Same with nuances about legalities of the point of "boarding" or rights of the Commander. Very interesting to the lawyers I suppose, but of no interest to the public.

What we see is a man being physically dragged from his seat because UA's desire to move some staff around was more important to them than the people who'd paid good money to use their "service". Then we hear the CEO complain that the poor chap became "disruptive" after being asked to "voluntarily" leave the plane.

That's what we base out judgement on. A company that's disappeared so far up its own backside that it's forgotten that it exists only because people being willing to give it their business. Treat people with such disdain and contempt you simply don't deserve to exist.

It might even be not much more expensive than 4 x $800

A friend came out with a funny comment regarding these unfortunate events. (He travels a lot. )
"Why am I paying full fare...if, in reality, I am actually "standby" at all times?"

What specifically prevents an airline from offering whatever it wants to offer?

https://www.facebook.com/tickld/vide...5247751208371/

Is the just kill me part real??? This just gets worse and worse

You keep asserting this but you offer no evidence.

Lots of chat. Quite simply, Munoz should resign over his comments. And if he won't, the board of directors should dismiss him.

Failing to follow legitimate cabin crew directions is an offence.

If a cabin crew member orders you to take off your clothes and bend over, you're under no obligation to comply.

There isn't. There is a maximum that can be required to be offered, but they obviously can offer anything they want. Lots of kool-aide drinkers on here.

True, and IIRC Munoz commutes to/from corporate headquarters and his beach-front McMansion in NE Florida (Ponte Vedra Beach) by........wait for it........private jet.

If this doesn't go away, my prediction is that the board will ask Munoz to leave, along with a $10,000,000+ golden parachute.

Forgetting all the legalistics, this whole episode, the way it is unfolding, is the result of two intelligence failures:
- The first was an artificial intelligence failure of a computer selecting the human victims.
- The second was a human intelligence failure, sending out a Tweet message to the general public and then following it up by sending out a written but different internal message that in essence blamed the customer, based on only half the information in hand.

I suppose that Mr. Munzo in a panic of what to say, what to say moment, relapsed back to his previous CEO experiences at CSX, a freight hauling company at the time he composed the internal letter. He did get one item right, "There are lessons to be learned." (all the way from the top to the floor at UAL)

Whether UAL or the PD believe they were right it is irrelevant .....most of the World disagree.

This really is the time to go into PR overdrive and admit you were wrong and try to defuse the situation.

This is going to be a Harvard Business School Case Study.

And not in a good way.

Ordinarily, something like this would never see the inside of a courtroom, the parties involved having reached a sensible (and cheaper) out-of-court settlement.

But when one of those parties (who should know better) clearly subscribes to the "when you're in a hole, keep digging" philosophy, this one could go all the way ...