To the air lines that might be it. But to me. I am going to miss my train, a day less vacation, have to get back home and come again the next day (or if you are away have to get hotel for the night), have my plans screw up and if I have connecting flights I miss those too and therefore screw up my trip even more. Not to mention if I pre prchase tickets for concerts, trains then it gets all screw up coz the airline over book. So no I don't have a shit about the airline since they don't have a shit about us.

If they care they should not overbook or up their compensation till someone who is willing to give up their seats. Forcing someone off is not the way to go.

Exactly. That is where I am saying we are not seeing the whole story.

As I said before though, if you are argumentative or confrontational to airline staff it is not going to get you anywhere. If you are being difficult I wouldn't expect it to go your way. The industry has seen its fair share of nutcases in the past while. Airlines take safety very seriously.

Just like at your home, a restaurant or your own vehicle. It isnt anyones right to be on board except the owner. You can be asked to leave. If police were required to remove your presence, I think that is probably your own wrong doing despite if you feel you are in the right. Get off, yell, sue, call the police... Do whatever you feel is right. But you wont be on the airplane.

united is horrible, just like air canada rouge... my flight was delayed by 4hrs, i had it setup so that they would notify me by phone if there were changes to my flight, i didn't get notified, arrived at the airport 3hrs early... and i got a $15.00 voucher for my troubles -_- couldve had several more hours of fun :/

I would consider this more of an isolated incident than the norm, however, it is evident that UA did not handle this situation very well, during and after the incident.

AC & UA have been good to me, so I will continue to do business with them.

Yes.

Now do that to 186 people. Think before you speak.

Alright .. Tuning out. This is sidetracking me from my day working on the car.

You just said that they try to "disturb shit the least", which is contradictory if you admit their "bottom line" comes first.

It's a bunch of bullshit anyways. If a passenger no-shows at the last minute they don't get a refund, so these Airline fuckers are just trying to double dip fares at the passengers' expense.

Not acceptable.

is that somehow the beaten victim's fault?

i'm not doubting there could be more to this story (don't understand why else they would've gotten violent), but at the end of the day this is 100% on the airline.

Ok one last reply.


Airline fares are competitive. If they have to double dip, because the other airline is doing the same... Well guess what is going to happen. We all want $200 trips to Mexico in the winter. This is what comes from it.

Yes, disturbing shit the least is correct. If you look at it in black in white, an airline might as well not fly. Crews get sick, airplanes break, passengers have medical emergencies... The logistics of an airline is way deeper then the average person thinks about. Its all calculated and someone up top is taking the risk.

Disturbing shit the least not only helps the overall passenger, it also saves the company money. Business remember.

And yes, its probably to screw the passenger who is paying their salary.

That looks like the police to me.

I'm assuming the pour soul who wouldn't get off the airplane felt it was his right to be on there. Its not. He wouldnt listen. He didnt even listen when police were on board. As I said, deal with it off the plane, because he isnt going...

But yes, the problem stems from the airlines over booking procedures. I dont think this happens everyday.

The other 186 people is not my problem. That's the airline fault for overbooking. So they can up the compensation till someone gives up their seats or give the 4FA take a private jet/another airline,train etc etc and eat the cost so next time they don't do it again.

Not my fault United overbook and are too cheap to give out compensation. They did this to themselves.

This is where we disagree. I think we are seeing the whole story.
If you started the argument, then you should be kicked off. But if the airline is trying to kick you off because of their own fault, and you refuse to move, that's their fault, not yours. They literally could have solved this problem with another $800 voucher.

I do agree. But once again just because you bought a ticket doesnt mean you own that seat. I'm not defending the airlines actions at all, just trying to broaden the insight people see on the industry. Just like mrhappyslip, peoples views are generally very narrow.

$1000 woukd have been peanuts compared to the damage the media is causing, the 2.5 hour delay (remember half those people on the flight were probably connecting passenger which may have missed their connection).

Reading some of the comments on reddit, it's laughable what united does with their vouchers. One person said they got multiple $50 vouchers, one voucher allowed per flight, expires in a year, and they can't use it for "popular" flight paths/times.

This guy refusing to move, right or wrong, got us all talking about this overbooking issue and how airlines handled this situation.

The sentiment among the general public right now is that United Airlines done fucked up, and hopefully this incident brings about change.

I seem to recall another incident in history where a passenger refused to move, which sparked ALL sorts of change in society...

that's b/c you probably don't sit in the fight club seats, too mainstream. Kappa

I'm a bit unclear on the situation (and possibly how flight arrangement work). I thought if regular passengers don't show up for their flights, there's passengers on standby that can take those empty seats?

But how do you literally have too many people actually enter the plane so that people have to be removed from the seats? Don't they do a count of how many seats they have available and let in that same amount of passengers through the gates?

Also why does it have to be a random generated selection for removal, why not just remove the last 4 people who bought tickets last.. I mean If I had planned months in advance for a flight only to get randomly selected for removal, I would be pretty irate.

I wish I got randomly selected for upgrades more often... like that would happen.

Many people are questioning the "randomness" of the system, and thinking it biases towards people who paid less for their tickets which usually means those who booked well in advance.

Their random generated seat selector is the same random generator that happens to always luck-out on choosing a brown person for screening.

yeah you are :pokerface:

I think someone mentioned it earlier, but the "extra passengers" were flight crew that needed to get to their next destination, so they weren't pre-booked passengers.

Nobody likes being bumped on a flight, but overbooking is becoming pretty commonplace with the razor thin margins that the airlines run on. I'd say about 1/3 of the flights I take are overbooked and in reality, they have to do this to some extent to make sure that they maximize their earning potential for each flight. Plenty of business travelers, especially passengers with status on the airline or higher fare classes can cancel/reschedule with very little notice leaving them with little to no revenue for a now empty seat. It's a gamble for the airlines, but ultimately, they got to be prepared to pay if they're taking the gamble of overbooking.

However, they way they handled this situation was terrible - especially when the problem could have been solved with money. It blows my mind that they'd elect to forcibly remove a passenger than throw more money at a problem until it's solved. There's absolutely no upside that can come out of getting cops to drag someone out of a plane.

As other have alluded to, reason why the flight was overbooked is because airlines typically sell +10% of capacity due to no shows and last minute cancellations.

I know this to be true for AC. I'd presume WestJet would use the same metric.

Ted explains the science of overbooking:

Its a game they play. Sometimes (most times) the house win, and sometimes the house lose. If they lose, they better make damn sure they can pay up appropriately.



And below is an interesting video explaining economics of airline - how majority of their profit are from business class. Economy class are just there to fill up space. They will NEVER bump business or 1st class.

I'm confused as to why they let everyone board, and THEN asked for people to get off. Like I said, I've been bumped on a flight before when I had booked my ticket well in advance, however, at least they did it while we were waiting to board. If the staff needed to get to their destination, you would think that they knew about that before they let people on the plane..