United Airlines Forcibly Removing a Man from an Overbooked Flight

After a United Airlines flight between Chicago and Louisiana was overbooked, they initially asked for volunteers to leave the flight, after they were already on the plane. No volunteers showed their hands, so they randomly selected a person, and dragged him out.

It is a pretty brutal scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2-SEb14_4

My thought is, how are they selecting someone already on the plane to disembark? Shouldn’t they stop loading new passengers as soon as the plane is full? I really feel like they should have handled this better at the gate, rather than on the plane.

I suspect that I may be missing some facts?

4 Comments

  1. They did not deny boarding. They removed him after boarding. This is a different story. $800 compensation is pathetic when factoring in that last minute travel can run at least that high. They should have offered more and more until someone take the bait.

    1. That is what I mean. Once they plane is full, they should have denied boarding, not removing a passenger already on the plane and let someone else board instead.

  2. The story is quite complicated and both sides have some valid points here. I do think it could have been resolved in a better way.

    http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/real-reason-man-dragged-off-united-flight-stop-happening/

    Mathew,

    Do you know if Canadian airlines are any better when it comes to bumping passengers? What right’s (if any) do we have if we are bumped from a flight?

    This happened recently..
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-bumping-overbooking-airline-1.4060820

    Apparently the Canadian Government wants to do something

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/united-airline-bumping-canada-garneau-1.4065228

    1. Thanks for the research Omkar.

      In my experience, if the flight is overbooked, they generally deal with it at the gate, whereby, the excess number of passengers do not get to board the flight.

      I have no problem with overbooking and not allowing passengers to board. But once they are boarded, I think it would just make more sense not to allow the excess passengers to board.

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