Posted on 04/10/2017 2:59:25 PM PDT by grayboots
My husband is a Gold member on United and is totally disgusted by what they did to that poor man. I thought of a great marketing idea for other airlines. If they offered a comparable status on their airline to fly, my husband would jump at the chance to fly with them. Do you think the other airlines would think of this? I think so many people would switch over to their airline in a heartbeat. Or is this not an option for them?
Any logically-operated airline isn’t going to yank a customer already cleared, and allowed to board and get seated, in order to seat a passenger who has NOT already been cleared and boarded the plane.
Probably people who are getting their flight for “free” ie frequent flyer miles. Oh, and late arrivals. Helps to be punctual.
Wonder if a person can be bumped to 1st class if seats are available? Or if the airlines will be cheap. Something to ask about.
Also, the airlines will put you up in a hotel if your flight is canceled or you are bumped to many hours later.
They shouldn’t have let him board if they were overbooked. They also should have offered him transport sooner than 3 pm the next day. They also should have understood a doctor needing to get to his patients.
Some approaches just aren’t worth the bad PR—and become poor business practices.
Maybe. But I’ll guarantee you this, I won’t be refusing a lawful order from a police officer, you?
I’ll take the compensation and move on with life.
What a lot of people seem to be missing, (per the Chicago Trib.) is that this particular passenger bumped from the flight had already been taken off the plane, but he went back on and sat back down.
They really can’t have chaos and passengers running the show, but still. From the beginning, the situation was handled very poorly.
His luggage was probably checked too and carryons already tucked away.
Glad that I don't fly anymore.
In the early 60s airlines were offering 1/2 price seats to military in uniform. If the flight had no seats left then the military would get the boot first.
Today I imagine that it would probably be the last person to make a reservation/buy a ticket.
What happened to the old "stand-by" procedure. If the airline is going to overbook, then everyone purchasing a ticket after the flight is "full" is in a stand-by status and will only board if there are empty seats. You used to be able to save a little bit of money .. particularly servicemen .. if you weren't in a hurry to get somewhere.
Mistakes happen. They may have had a last minute order to get crew onboard. If they need the seat, they’ll get it.
Like I said, it’s unfortunate but that is what happened. That’s why you are compensated with a nice check and confirmed seat.
I think that it would be prudent for airlines to
1) Offer a sort of guaranteed seat option at a premium.
2) Post in large letters and in many places a notice that unless you paid the premium you might get bumped.
I dont WANT to get bumped, but it doesn’t matter to me, usually. I can see situations where I would pay more for a guaranteed seat.
From a PR standpoint and simple courtesy to your customers this should NEVER have happened. If the flight is overbooked you keep upping the offer for people to volunteer to take the next flight. $800 voucher did not do it so offer $500 cash money and avoid this kind of crap. If nobody takes $500, offer $600.
It really seems quite simple and in hindsight how much easier would this have been for everyone involved? This is corporate stupidity in the extreme and the optics alone are enough to erase $100 million in advertising.
Here’s another possible scenario that happens: the airline sells 137 tickets and 137 people board. Two people are “customers of size” and need an extra seat. They cannot pull those customers, they will, according to their overbooked policy, pull two others.
It happens...you don’t fight and not comply with orders of LE—it’s that simple.
They would have given him the next flight. There was likely no other flight that would have gotten him there before 3 pm the next day.
When the guy refused, a United employee should have offered the same deal to the next person on the list, and so on, until someone accepts.
Also, there is a reason the airlines make a list.
In the past, when they made intercom offers to the whole plane, competing passengers would get in fist fights about who should get the very good deal to de-plane!
VO: At United, our customers are so loyal, they sometimes have to be physically removed from our planes.
::cut to doc being dragged down the aisle.::
fade to black, cut to scrolling text
“At least we deplaned him while still on the runway.”
“We’ll never deplane you at altitude.”
“Fly United, we have a seat for you...until we don’t.”
Umm...okay.
Bit of a stretch there, ya think???
I understand that the overbook was caused by United employees needing to travel? So it wasn't technically an overbook until the company decided they wanted the seats for internal purposes? Do we know what kind of employees these were, such as pilots needing to get to another city for the next morning's flight? Or was it just office workers getting a friend to make room?
-PJ
what if you are going back to your base and this interruption would cause you to be AWOL. I put this 100% on the airline. Overbooking to avoid empty seats is what it was or a VIP needed a seat and the serf gets the boot.
The airline CEO seems to think it was not handled according to protocols.
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