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
I’m not 100% certain on what the exact scenario was. I will assure you that when passengers and involuntarily denied, it is looked at by many staff. No one in their right mind would “make room” for a fried. No chance in that happening. It was likely they needed crew somewhere to fly a plane full of people. This happens in small cities when you have a sick call or something.
United says it was a “flight crew” of 4 needed to work a flight departing from the current destination of Louisville. Another poster said that under union contract the airline is NOT allowed to drive crews by road (answering the question of several of us today, why didn’t they transport the crew the 300 miles by limo or van).
It seems like a huge screw-up to have already boarded passengers. I don’t know how often that happens, that airlines have to try to remove passengers already onboard, but that’s obviously a more obnoxious route to take than refusing someone boarding. Once people are in a seat and waiting to take off they may feel a lot more resistance to the idea of not flying that flight.
Good reasons for airlines to figure out their final passenger list before they start boarding, especially wrt their own crew transport needs! I suppose there is always some juggling at the end with no shows and standby passengers, but it seems like the first rule should be to never board anyone who does not 100% have a seat.
Then once in that dire situation, they should have kept upping the “offer” until they got enough volunteers. They got 3 passengers to accept their offer to leave the flight, but they needed a 4th. Given the outcome, it would have been a lot better if they’d offered multiple free flight vouchers until someone stepped forward voluntarily.
That fact bothered me, too.
A reasonable policy would be to have some cheaper, bootable seats if you want to be able to insert personnel for transfer. But, that doesn’t maximize revenue. I guess there were no stand by passengers on this flight.