At a particular moment it's $800 and voluntary. At the very next moment passenger is subject to forced removal.

This makes no sense. And I also see nothing in the contract of carriage that permits it.

The airline can deny boarding, but this person is physically inside the airplane having used his boarding pass for the purpose for which it exists: to facilitate boarding the plane. He is boarded. He was not in any way denied boarding. Rescinding that status is not listed at all in the contract of service.

Second, this is deeply uncivilized. The airline invited violence for a civil, non-criminal dispute resulting from their own planning negligence, and their own unwillingness to provide monetary compensation that anyone on board thought was reasonable.

And the police have liability here as well for agreeing to become violently involved in what is ultimately a monetary dispute.

Shame, shame, shame.

And by I mean getting dragged off the plane. Some are spectulating he was beat off camera. Nothing would justify that.

But if you force someone to drag you off a plan, you are asking for the natural consequences.

So, yes, the initial fault is United's. But there's blame enough to go around.

If I were in his position I'd quietly fume about it and United would get more comfortable about booting people who have boarded without repercussions. It's pretty rare that passengers' cases get brought to light so it's kind of refreshing.

If he had just left when the police arrived, as commenters above you are suggesting, then that would mean that the threat of violence was a successful solution to United's mistake, and we'd never have heard about it.

Otherwise this becomes might makes right.

Trying to solve business disputes by force, which is what the passenger did by refusing to leaves, is bad policy.

It's amazing how Americans can justify the most extreme violence for the most petty of reasons. This incident was absolutely meaningless _until_ this man had his face bloodied.

There were a thousand different options, besides force. Do that instead!

Note well: I am not saying that the cops are always right. I am not saying that we should all be good little citizens and obey whatever the authority figures tell us to do. I am saying that, in the actual world we live in, disobeying police orders will often involve painful physical consequences, almost immediately. You can argue about whether that should be. Fine. I'm saying that it is that way, though, and you'd better plan on it being that way in your situation before you decide to ignore what the cops tell you to do.

> Because the cops told him to, that's why.

"I am not saying obey authority figures whenever they tell us to do something. Even though I said in the previous sentence, 'because the cops told him to, that's why'."

Your note completely and utterly contradicts your previous statement. There is no way to reconcile them.

That is, when the authority figures are morally in the wrong, you can make a case that the moral thing to do is to disobey them. But just in terms of the actual way things work in this less than perfect world, you'd better think seriously about the price you're going to pay for doing so. You can say "they shouldn't use force". Fine. But in the real world, they're going to use force.

So, no, I'm not contradicting myself. I'm speaking in two different senses. There's the ideal world, and there's the practical way things actually work. In the real world, if you disobey an order from the cops, it's going to hurt you, no matter how morally right you are.

Actually, scratch that - the profession does not matter. Flying is an expensive form of travel and most people travelling do have a schedule to meet. Military can get very severely punished, businesspeople can lose critical deals, tourists can't get on connecting flights or get fired for being late back from vacation, and so on.

United just handled it completely wrong - instead of raising the offer as long as necessary, their staff decided that it would be simpler and cheaper to forcibly remove someone from the flight. It went wrong and now they must face the consequences.

Also, it looks like United violated their own rules: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...

So no, no the passenger was not unreasonable, this is the only type of thing that gets their leadership far above the rank and file to take enough notice to actually change policies to something reasonable which is this: pay enough for volunteers. You overbooked the flight, you pay the price, simple as that.

For the love of god, don't side with corporations where the ones setting the policies and profiting are far removed from both the enforcers of those policies, and the customers suffering at their hands. This is probably the number one source of social problems in the modern age: lack of individual accountability.

When a business is acting in an abhorent, immoral, or unethical manner profit and greed are nearly always the fundamental reasons.

Depends on the ticket. For lower price tickets, generally speaking you don't get anything if you miss your flight. For Business and First class tickets you can generally re-book or get the ticket refunded if you miss your flight. There are also some insurance policies you can get which will refund at least most of your ticket if you miss your flight due to medical or family emergencies.

There are other reasons that this can happen. An aircraft change (due to maintenance issues, for example) might result in fewer seats being available. In this case, the airline needed to relocate some employees and seats weren't available. For the record, I believe they handled it very badly.

If they sold tickets up to the plane is full, no more: they would have to charge people for missing their flight since the seat left without them. While that might be legal (and moral?) it isn't something people like to happen to them, so the airlines sell just a little over so that they can tell the guy who missed his flight, "sorry, but you can use your ticket on the next flight so you are only out your time."

In short overbooking when it works right is a way to earn some goodwill from people who make a mistake.

I've never seen EasyJet or Ryanair overbook flights (and they operate at WAY higher load factors that legacy airlines - Ryanair is up to 97% load factor on average).

Edit: looks like Ryanair actually doesn't overbook. "Ryanair is the only airline in Europe that does not overbook its flights; therefore Ryanair has eliminated the possibility of passengers being denied boarding due to overbooking."

so instead, sell a couple of seats twice, and bet that not everyone will show up. if you're wrong and everyone shows up, you have to pay people extra to take another flight, but that apparently happens infrequently enough that overbooking makes money over the long term.

Offer people compensation. Raise the offer until either (a) someone takes it, or (b) it's cheaper to send the employees via another route.

At some point the compensation isn't worth the profit margin of the other flight. They can just cancel it and let the flight crew go home.

Consider: suppose a kid lays across your driveway and refuses to budge. Are you allowed to drive over the kid? After all, if everyone starts doing this, you will lose your job and can't feed your own family, right?

Well, no. You have to figure out a way. Take a deep breath and call their parents, get an Uber or whatever it takes.

The situation would be different if a random person was just asking you not to go. In that case, you could ignore them.

Because physical violence is different.

The cops were there, though, and were (at least tacitly) authorizing the guy to try to physically remove the passenger. Is that legal and/or moral? Or does it have to be a uniformed officer before it becomes legal and moral?

Having a cop makes it legal, but the moral question is the one we are arguing.

I think the cop has the responsibility to remove the kid without endangering the kid.

If my doctor was laying on my driveway I'd drag him off and then leave. And it's morally and legally right to do so.

You have a "contract of lying on the driveway" with him, you've granted him permission to lie on the driveway for the next 1.5 hours, and your contract doesn't list you changing your mind as a reason for rescinding that prior permission, nor has he breached the contract in a way that permits you to remove him.

You're welcome to point out where in the contract of carriage you're basing your opinion. I'm finding no justification.

That said, refusing to follow the instructions of a flight crew and creating a scene is not going to end well for you however convinced you are in the righteousness of your position. (I have been bumped off a flight after I was onboard and sitting down. It was years ago and I don't remember what the exact circumstances were if I ever knew.)

They wanted to get an airline crew to another city. Sounds like United fucked up, overbooked a flight, and didn't want to :

    1. escalate compensation for passengers to get off the plane
    2. arrange alternate transportation for their crew

I'm sure someone would have opted to delay their lives if the offer was $1k, $2k, hell $3k. Why does United get to economically benefit by getting their pilots to the next flight and profit from it, while inconveniencing someone else who has already purchased the flight? Sure, they're legally allowed to do what they did, but they didn't even bother to offer the maximum amount their own contract says to, so not sure why they would get any sympathy.

In my experience, the airlines offer a decent incentive for taking a bump and they do this before boarding. I know delays have been crazy the past few days, so maybe people who were already delayed didn't want to wait any longer?

I wonder what kind of incentives were offered? You'd hope United would offer enough to get someone to volunteer, especially in cases like this that are so late into the boarding process. Why not just get a United official on the plane to start raising incentives until the $ amount makes someone bite.

Terms and conditions of the contract may be legal but it could very well result in incidents like this.

You've skipped over the part where the people involved bashed his head against another seat, then dragged him down the aisle while concussed and limp.

They needed the seats, fine. They asked for people to volunteer and no one did? Did they even offer maybe a 1st class on a flight taking off a few hours later? I can't imagine that out of more than 100 people they wouldn't find at least 4 interested in waiting in the airport to travel 1st class.

They handled that like bozos and I can absolutely see how a passenger chosen "at random" would make a fuss.

Apparently they did. The law is pretty clear on this. You can be refused a flight for this reason - United decided that they wanted the seat for their employee more than the passenger.

Once the passenger starts resisting, he/she should get removed by any means necessary, up to and including force. When people are acting unreasonably they should be prepared for unpleasant outcomes.

Public opinion I think will also be very "unreasonable" regarding United in these circumstances.

It's lawful, and eventually you will be taken off the plane. The time to fight the battle is after you get off, not struggling against overwhelming odds and then getting charges piled on you.

Laws/rules don't change if people don't make a fuss about them being wrong.

This situation is akin to getting kicked out of a store that you were asked to leave.

Your rights and compensation are spelled out in the law dealing with situations like this. One person is not allowed to make these unilateral decisions because they feel as though the law is wrong in that time.

Laws and rules don't change if you act like an entitled drama queen that tries to bring race into the situation

I don't see United's contract of carriage rule 21 or rule 25 applicable. The passenger was granted boarding, not denied. FAR 91.3(a) doesn't apply, this has nothing to do with the operation of the aircraft. And federal regulation preempt state and local law, but you're welcome to try and convince me.

I see no contractual basis for involuntary removal after boarding is granted, other than being in breach of some other portion of the contract of carriage. The airline was basically in a position per their own contract, of auctioning off a seat on their own plane and they got pissy and called the police, which was improper, and then the police didn't bother to evaluate the appropriateness of removal.

Trespass doesn't apply, the passenger was authorized. Rescinding that state requires a basis in the contract, or FAA regulations or other law and so far the people engaging in victim blaming are providing a lot of jabber and no convincing explanations.

From united contract of carriage: UA shall have the right to refuse to transport or shall have the right to remove from the aircraft at any point, any Passenger for the following reasons...:

  C) Force Majeure and Other Unforeseeable Conditions – Whenever such action is necessary or advisable by reason of weather or other conditions beyond UA’s control

  H) Safety – Whenever refusal or removal of a Passenger may be necessary for the safety of such Passenger or other Passengers or members of the crew including, but not limited to: 3) Passengers who fail to comply with or interfere with the duties of the members of the flight crew.

Also, the distinction for boarding granting and non-granting is unclear to me. Is the fact that you receive a boarding pass indication that you're on the plane for good? Apparently not.

> people engaging in victim blaming

Assuming that the passenger was a victim. You should be blamed if you're at fault and unreasonable. If you're unhappy with the situation, deal with it later in the courts. Just like you can't talk your way out of a speeding ticket by "asserting your rights".

And in fact there's no oversold issue either, as it turns out. Exactly four paying passengers were removed for exactly four non-paying non-customer crew. That is not an oversold situation.

H) What safety issue applies here? This isn't a safety issue.

The contract has allowances in specific situations for passenger removal, not one of those allowances is applicable. You have to stretch way above and beyond the simple meaning of words in a dictionary to get where you're going.

> If you're unhappy with the situation, deal with it later in the courts. Just like you can't talk your way out of a speeding ticket by "asserting your rights".

That's asinine. Speeding tickets presuppose a civil or criminal offense from the outset. There is no civil, criminal or contractual offense at all on the part of the passenger/victim.

Some comments here talk about $800. I don't think that's equivalent to a 1st ticket, but I may be wrong.

In any case, they may have the law, but I still think it was very poorly handled.

I'm also curious to know what was their random process to select the 4 passengers.

why not? if the passenger in this situation was allowed to just refuse, Delta would have had to get its employees to another location via some other method, or delay/cancel whatever it was they were supposed to do when they go there.

why is that a worse universe than this one?

  s/Delta/United/