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.
-PJ
And in your scenario of keep offering more and more, at what point should the airline stop if no accepts the offer. Should they keep going until they offer the CEO position for the company. At some point there is a limit. They had one and met it. End of story. Sorry for the passenger, as the force used by security (not UA) was unnecessary, but UA did nothing wrong.
Or just offered to get the bumped passengers to their destination asap - renting a limo for them would have been a better plan.