it’s worse than that according to the story: “asked for four passengers to relinquish their seats for airline employees on stand-by.”
So they didn’t overbook - they needed the seats to get their own employees to their next destination. Talk about bad PR.
I’ve had to fly a lot recently for work - every friggin’ set (usually I have to get a connection) of flights has had either “delayed due to late inbound plane arrival”, “delayed due to late crew arrival”, or “delayed due to air traffic control” (except one series out of 32 sets).
There was 1 due to weather - everything else was something that was related to scheduling, etc.
Have had 3 flights that had to “rebalance” the weight due to excess luggage, one they offered vouchers for $500 to get weight off - I took one of those.
Flying has become absolutely miserable.
I wonder if the UAL employees flying “standby” were actually crew members flying to a different airport to crew a flight, and that’s why they were given priority. I can’t believe that any airline would be so stupid as to bump paying passengers in favor of their own employees, with the resulting PR nightmare.
Since airlines have reduced the number of available flights, I suspect we will see more of this.
The airlines needed pilots elsewhere. They tried their best to find volunteers. In my opinion they would have been better off upping the ante one more time.
But this doctor was whacko- screaming like a girl and actually fighting with security?
The airline owns the plane, after all. They can throw everyone off if they wanted to.