It wasn't overbooked. At the last moment they decided to boot 4 passengers to make room for United employees.
The passengers had paid for their seat, reserved it, had boarding passes, and were sitting in that seat waiting to take off when the company decided to boot them.
One passenger made a scene, but it was disgraceful in the case of all of them.
Not United employees.
United partner airline employees.
Has United explained why four employees were needed for the flight the next day? What happened to the original flight crew? Or, because of incompetence, did United never schedule employees for that flight to begin with? Why, instead of dragging people off of a plane that was ready to embark, didn't United simply cancel that next day's flight, or delay it? It's a 4 1/2 hour drive from Chicago to Louisville. Why couldn't the staff drive there instead? A friend of mine's niece is a flight attendant, and whatever airline she works for, they make their employees drive if it's within a certain distance.
Several years ago, (I don't recall the airline), my son and his then girlfriend were sitting in a plane, at JFK with a bunch of other people waiting for the plane to take off. They had flown back that morning from Europe, and were on a puddle jumper headed to Albany, NY, where it was expected to land sometime before midnight. After a long period of delay, an announcement was finally made that they didn't have a flight crew to man the plane, and everyone would have to disembark. If I recall correctly, they put them up in some $hithole hotel nearby, and because the flight they put them on was for early the next morning, neither of them were able to get any sleep.