I realize that "overbook" can mean different things but United flight #3411 wasn't oversold to statistically offset no-shows. Instead, the plane had a capacity of 70 seats[1] and United sold all 70 seats to paying customers with zero cancellations. That's a perfect economic situation for United.

What went wrong was 4 extra United employees needed a last-minute ride on that plane to Kentucky. Since this is an HN audience, I guess we could frame it as a massive failure in the "information flow" through their computer reservations system.

The very second that United knew they had 4 employees they had to acccomodate, their computer system should have immediately confirmed those 4 employees on flight #3411 first such that the plane only shows 66 available seats instead of 70. (Computers doing math for the win!) That way, either 4 of the customers get denied a boarding pass at the check-in kiosk, or they get denied at the gate that scans the barcode before they enter the jetway. Instead, United let all 70 passengers board and settle in their seats.

If United insists that their employees take precedence over paying passengers, their damn computer systems need to reflect that reality in the seating database!

All of those opportunities to have the computer system "help" were missed that would have prevented the situation from escalating to a bloody face plastered all over the news.

[1] https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/United_Airlines/United_Air...

Especially in this specific situation! It's a five-hour drive to Louisville from Chicago. United should have chartered a van for the employees and driven them there.

Can you imagine going to home depot and someone pulling drills out of your hands and giving them to employees?

What you're describing is a race condition, to use the term from real-time software. By updating faster, you reduce the timing window, but the problem can still happen - the passengers are all in the jetway, but the 4 crewmembers are in the employee lounge and just a 3 minute walk from the gate. They can still make the flight before all the passengers are out of the jetway...

In that case, I'm saying there would only be up to 66 (not 70) paying customers in the jetway. This still leaves 4 available seats for the deadheading United employees.

In other words, don't render those 4 extra United employees "invisible" to the reservation system only to later make them "visible" when they finally show up at the gate after all 70 passengers are already in their seats. United knew they needed those 4 employees in Kentucky hours before customers boarded #3411 in Chicago. The issue is that they had zero empty seats on that flight so they had to bribe/force 4 "volunteers" to give up their seats.

If United's computer system doesn't have enough sophistication to set aside plane seats for employees that have higher priority than paying customers, they deserved to have the situation escalate into a Mexican standoff between the gate agent, the seated customer, and the Chicago police.

If you're talking about a rare emergency circumstance where United's operations center doesn't know they need those 4 seats for employees until after all customers are boarded, yes that can still happen. However, that wasn't the case for flight #3411. The 4 employees were "running late" to appear at #3411's gate. This means they were not a "hot standby" crew at the airport's lounge. Instead, it meant that these employees were are either on an incoming flight or were stuck in traffic driving to the airport from home/hotel. Either way, United had plenty of time to reserve 4 seats on #3411 for their higher-priority employees but for whatever reason, they didn't do it.

All 70 passengers are in the jetway or on the plane. Say, 40 are on the plane, but 30 are still in the jetway. At that moment, United discovers that it needs 4 crewmembers on that plane. They have 4 crewmembers sitting around in a crew lounge in that terminal of the airport. They can walk to the gate in 3 minutes. 3 minutes from now, some of the passengers will still be in the jetway, waiting to board the plane. Now what?

It's not enough to just improve the computer system. The timing window still exists, even if it's smaller. What you need to fix this is some kind of business rule, like "You can't deny boarding to a passenger who's already in the jetway, no matter how badly you need their place for a crewmember".

United's own Contract of Carriage uses the term boarding and discusses overbooked flights: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...

However, by all accounts (including the statement from Oscar Munoz) is that the Airline Employees needed to board after the customers had already boarded.

The simple matter is that United really doesn't have a policy in place for such an event, but they tried to treat is as an overbooking anyways, which is questionable.

If this had happened before the passenger got on there wouldn't have been much of a story - but United got themselves into a pickle by not having a procedure in place for moving their employees around when the plane was already loaded up and ready to go.

Strictly speaking, refusing to leave was a violation of the airline's rules, but they also didn't really have the right to eject him per their own Contract. You don't surrender all rights when you board a plane, and quite frankly it doesn't seem like United has a lot of ground to stand on when it comes to this particular incident. They didn't have a policy in place and tried to make another one fit, but it was an awkward fit at best.

"We are not going to put a law enforcement official to take them off...to remove a booked, paid, seated passenger...we can't do that."

That's hard to reel back in later.

a) the circumstances did not warrant his removal pre-boarding per the contract and

b) there are no clauses pertaining to post-boarding removal

IANAL so here's my source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sdtG0WyktMM

[0]: http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2017/04/united-airlines-own-contrac...

> One might argue that Dao had not completed “boarding” until the cabin door was closed. This argument would be wrong. The term “boarding” is not defined in the definition section of the contract, and absent an explicit definition in the contract, terms are to be afforded their plain meaning. “Boarding” means that the passenger presents a boarding pass to the gate agent who accepts or scans the pass and permits entry through the gate to the airplane, allowing the passenger to enter the aircraft and take a seat.

> It is possible in this regard to distinguish between the collective completion of the plane’s boarding process, which is not complete until all passengers have boarded and the cabin door is closed. But that is different from each passenger’s boarding, which is complete for each individual once he or she has been accepted for transportation by the gate agent and proceeded to the aircraft and taken his or her assigned seat.

It is exactly what booking a seat is: buying an entitlement to seat in that plane for that specific flight. Otherwise what's the point? I understand that overbooking can be useful for companies, but in that case they should just buy back the service they oversold. That's how markets work.

Property rights are not everything. What is protected in a market economy is the free transaction between two economic actors. United's property rights of the plane, of course (even though it's likely to be leased, anyway), but also the rights created by the contract between the carrier and the passenger. If you don't protect these rights, you have nothing like a functioning market economy. Capitalism relies on social structures able to protect rights.

I don't see anything compelling there. The only somewhat legal word is "property rights".

It doesn't mention the "common carrier laws" that may be involved here, and likely override any "property rights." I suspect we'll see more enlightened debate soon as aviation attorneys start talking about it.