Kentucky doctor drug off overbooked plane by force in Chicago : 5th UPDATE

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This is old news.

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It was just posted today. Did not see a thread about it.

United doing its best "We don't want to have paying passengers" PR lately.

So, what am I missing here? They dragged a passenger off a flight to get a flight crew on the plane, right?

Why not drive the flight crew from Chicago to Louisville, what would that take 6 hours? Geez, guy gonna get paid a lot, and he should.

Absolutely stupid of the airline.

All you United had to do was keep raising the incentive for someone to debark. Eventually someone would take it. Certainly better than the cost of the bad press on business and the cost of the settlement.

Look at your ticket. They reserve the right to do this just like you can ask a paying customer to leave. United made a bad customer service decision. The customer was a douche bag.

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If you asked someone to leave your property and place of business what would you do? You would call the police and if the person didn't comply they would drag their arse off. I have never understood why people seem to think planes are public property.

We can question the wisdom of overbooking, though airlines struggle with survival and all of the crybaby masses aren't interested in saving them when they go out of business. People get bumped all the time and this individual just though he was more important than everyone else.

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This is the dumbest bullshite I've ever read. The customer entered into a contract to have a seat on the plane in return for paying money to the airline. The airline, in efforts to optimize their flights, overbooked the flight. While this is a commonplace procedure, these frickers CHOSE to use the procedure on a flight that they were using to transport THEIR OWN PEOPLE. ANY self made person knows the customer ALWAYS goes first because they are the people putting food on your table and a roof over your head. Furthermore, any time I have ever been on a flight that was over booked they took care of this shite before people got on the plane. They went about every step of this process in the dumbest way possible and I hope that dude takes them to the matt.

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overbooked the flight.

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This keeps getting said, but it's really not what happened.

No seats were being taken to give to other customers. None were turned away because others had bought tickets.

Horrible PR move. But I agree with the above post. "you ain't telling me what to do" struck again and the consequences ensued. People should understand what the contracts they enter say. Private companies aren't public institutions. You can be denied service under certain situations and this was one of them.

I will allow the fact that airlines do give themselves get out of jail free cards in the contract. They can do what they want, when they want and don't have to tell you at all. That is true.

Second point, the article said that these were 4 people from a partner airline. I take that as meaning that it is another airline under the same corporate umbrella as United, otherwise why would you do this for people with no financial or economic ties to you?

The problem that the airline had was they needed to get 4 ppl form Chi to Louisville in time for a Monday flight. The airlines function in its simplest form is to get people from point a to b in an efficient manner. They know that these people have to get to Louisville. They know they have to get there from another location that is probably not initially chicago. There had to be contingency plans in place in case something like this happened. All of that aside, passengers don't just materialize at the gate, you scan your boarding pass and alert the airline you are there. There was a point in time in which the airline knew that all of the seats were accounted for including people who were making connecting flights into Chicago.

Whats interesting to think about is knowing that all the seats are taken and you are going to have to convince someone to give there seat up, one flight is going to be delayed regardless. What if they delayed one of the connecting flights long enough that people just missed the flight to Louisville? Happens all the time, it is a risk that everyone who travels that way understands and is willing to take, no one would have been the wiser, and it avoids all this bullshite.

The memes are already happening.

Meet the new Head of Customer Service!