1. The four crew members were scheduled to fly on an outbound flight out of Louisville the following day and were either running behind schedule themselves or were traveling to Louisville to man a flight whose scheduled crew was flying into Louisville on a delayed flight. According to what some folks here have posted, United was obligated under Federal law to get these four crew members to Louisville.
2. In seating the four crew members, United may have breached the "contract of carriage" with any passengers who were removed from the flight.
It's obviously much more complicated than this, but my understanding is that this was the legal dilemma United faced with the four crew members destined for Louisville.
As I wrote earlier, we do not know the extenuating circumstances as to why four UAL employees appear to have arrived at the gate perhaps after all the passengers had been boarded.
“this was the legal dilemma United faced with the four crew members destined for Louisville.”
Whenever I have a legal dilemma I grab the nearest Vietnamese guy, shove $800.00 in his face and say “solve my problem or I’ll beat you up.”
Works like a charm.
But I’m sure you can see that this stopped being about the legal rights of passenger vs. airline policy the instant the video first hit social media. This is the world we live in today where everyone has a camera and the internet. Expensive equipment and a satellite truck are no longer needed, virtually anyone can be an instant national news reporter with what they carry in their pocket or purse.
So United will only argue the legalisms at the peril of it’s own stock price and market value. This has become one of the biggest PR nightmares of the last decade at least, on par with the time the auto industry execs flew private jets to DC to beg for bailouts, or the Bridgestone tire fiascon.
In every case it matters as much how quickly the company responds as what they say, and United punted on both. It’s kinda hard to imagine them handling this any worse, and it’s going to cost them big-league money. Better sooner than later.
I don’t believe federal law would prevent them from delaying the flight until the scheduled flight crew could arrive. I think they are using federal regulations as an excuse. Also they may be stretching their crews too thin to save money.
Yes, I can see how it would have been a delima with those circumstances. Why didn’t they offer more money and leave the doctor in his seat? There was probably someone on that plane whispering to his wife that he’d get off for $1000 or $1200. Everybody has their price.
I, also, think that ground transportation would have been a viable solution. Four and a half hours is not that far. Probably the employees in the situation are not encouraged to look for an alternate solution, though. Just follow protocol.
Shame. A lot of people are paying the price for someone’s childish arrogance and rotten judgement.
I did not notice that and I do not follow that logic. It seems to me that UAL could have chartered a private twin engine prop plane to shuttle the crew to Louisville and arrived there only an hour or two later than this flight would have arrived there. If a private twin engine prop plane was not fast enough, then charter a private jet. What am I missing?