I can also confirm it personally because I have family in that area and it turns out they were treated by him. o_O He doesn't have the best reputation, apparently. Not that that's at all relevant to United's behavior, of course--it's like those cases where a cop shoots an unarmed man for no reason and they try to defend it because it turns out he'd robbed a liquor store the previous week. Was pretty surprising to me, though.
It's great that others have checked out the guy's statements, but I think the downvotes on the parent and easy dismissal of his/her IMO reasonable question is a bit much.
Except their tone / style was far from reasonable. It was arrogant and elitist. If they have concerns about the authenticity of reddit posts, there are far better ways of wording it, instead of going lulzzz reddit hurr durr.
That said, United utterly botched this in the way they handled it.
And I don't let the PD off the hook either. That police can use violence to settle what is essentially a business dispute is just wrong.
I was responding mostly to the claim that they can only denying boarding in the event of an oversale because they can deny boarding to accommodate positioning crew, it happens all the time.
I agree that once the passenger was boarded, the situation was different. United screwed up, and they compounded the problem in their violent removal of the passenger and their subsequent public responses to the incident.
"Confirmed reserved space means space on a specific date and on a specific flight and class of service of a carrier which has been requested by a passenger, including a passenger with a “zero fare ticket,”"
"Zero fare ticket means a ticket acquired without a substantial monetary payment such as by using frequent flyer miles or vouchers" ... "A zero fare ticket does not include free or reduced rate air transportation provided to airline employees and guests".
Which means the employees cannot be counted as having confirmed reserved space. 14 CFR 250.2a says:
"In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily."
Which means denying the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space means denying 0 paying passengers. They cannot bump passengers for crew. Whether they do or not, they legally cannot.
I believe your interpretation is incorrect. This was discussed in another thread last night.[0]
Assuming 14 CFR 250 even applies (there's multiple reasons why it may not), the explicit exclusion of employees from the definition of a zero fare ticket is immaterial due to employees otherwise satisfying the definition of confirmed reserved space.[1]
The critical point is that the definition merely includes zero fare tickets, which are explicitly defined as not being employees. That does not mean employees cannot otherwise satisfy the definition of confirmed reserved space.
Deadheading employees are not involved in the operation of the aircraft, so they may be considered passengers. The employee travel passes used reserve a specific date, flight and class of service at their request.
Due to the urgency of that particular situation, the passes used were positive-space, also having higher seating priority than paying passengers. While that sucks, the alternative is that an entire flight is delayed or canceled, with many passengers on that flight missing their connections. Those missed connections then bump people off subsequent flights, creating a cascade of chaos. That's why deadheading flight crew have priority over ticketed passengers in certain situations.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095224
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/index.php?width=840&...
United screwed up by failing to follow the correct procedures, and the compounded that failure by sending security personnel onto the plane to manhandle their customers.
* maintaining extra crew on standby at each airport, in case of no-shows by the scheduled crew.
* reserving (i.e. not selling) space on flights specifically for such crew transport.
* buying seats for them on other airlines, chartering a small aircraft, or other means of transport.
* offering enough cash to persuade volunteers to debark. Considering that the alternative is to compensate an entire planeful, the budget for this is a lot higher than 4*$800.
Via https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_... and more:
> Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. You are dead wrong when saying that United legally kicked him off the plane.
> 1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
> 2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
> 3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.