Looking at this through the eyes of the other passengers.Yes, United should have offered up the the max of $1250 for volunteers as I understand they stopped at $800. But what do you do if there are no takers? What does an airline do in the rare circumstance where either through their own incompetence or no fault of their own the flight cannot leave until the overbooked capacity is relieved. Four were selected randomly to leave the plane. Three complied. One did not. How long should the other paying passengers been required to wait while they negotiated with the fourth passenger to leave voluntarily so that force would be avoided. One hour, three, four? Should the entire flight have been cancelled and taxied back to the gate so as to prevent a show of force? Would the headline story then be passengers required to wait on runway 4 hours or flight cancelled because airline refused to relieve overcapacity?
That’s the max a passenger can ask for, there is no limit to what the airline can offer. And that’s also before the aircraft has been boarded.
They can throw in free upgrades for 1st/business class and other incentives that passengers would jump at.
Instead they chose to assault a paying customer like a drunk at a roadhouse who has now lawyered up.
The CEO tune has changed since this morning, I’ll bet United legal has had a rather somber conversation with him.
The airline needed to find the market price of 4 seats by continuing to raise prices until people took their offer. If they overbook to try and maximize revenue, they need to take the hit when it doesn’t go their way. I bet they wish they