One more reason NOT to fly the’friendly’ skies of United. Competitors cannot buy the negative press this caused.
The flight was overbooked. They had to remove a passenger per their overbook policy. He was the chosen candidate. According to procedure, United staff (or any other airline) would kindly ask the passenger to deplane and explain in full detail what has occurred.
The involuntary denied boarding passenger will be given a check for three times the amount that he paid and will also be given a confirmed seat on the next flight.
When he chose not to deplane, the United staff had no choice but to call law enforcement. Once they arrive, you are either willingly or unwillingly getting off of the plane—he chose the latter. It was his doing and his alone. He didn’t follow orders from the police and this is the end result. It’s personal responsibility and poor behavior on his part.
I use to use Continental and had zero complaints, ever. United bought them and turned them into their own airline Hell...
United is about as “friendly skies” as a ticked off Cottonmouth with it’s tail caught under your tire...
What I don’t get - if the flight was over-booked (an incredibly common state of affairs today), and they had to resort to a computer picking “random” customers to bump from the flight, why would they include in the “drawing” a paying customer who was already SEATED on the plane???? How about seating folks based on their booking order (after their paid priority order)? This was completely avoidable - and I wouldn’t be surprised if that booted passenger has a legitimate and healthy lawsuit ahead of him against United.
United’s CEO is going to need another heart transplant.
http://fortune.com/united-airlines-ceo-oscar-munoz/
I still can’t figure out why they singled this Dr. out for removal. Surely there had to be some other person who would disembark willingly, get another flight and/or an upgrade.
What makes this so inexcusable is that Chicago is a HUB for United. It is hard to believe they did not have another plane available to fly their last minute crew.
Bumping 4 passengers, putting them up in a hotel and giving each a check for $800 adds up to at least $4K in cost. Much more now with the bad publicity and probably a lawsuit. But even the $4K might have been close to the actual costs of flying a second small plane of their own 300 miles. This fiasco made the flight two hours late. Seems like a lot of time to make other arrangements at their own hub.