I could see overbooking made illegal, but then I remember who makes the laws right now.
Hillary can make this a key component of her platform in 2020.
They should have found another way to get their stupid employees where they needed to go or find another crew. This whole thing is absurd. I hope the flight and security staff get brought up on assault charges. The lawsuit from this will be staggering.
Overbooking isn’t and can’t be illegal, it works.
The question is what happens when the airline has a rule that says they can kick you off if they absolutely must, it’s in the contract you “signed” with your ticket, and you, like Bartleby the Scrivener… refuse.
You’d think, but your rights on a flight are basically nothing.
United itself however, could easily fold because of it.
I don’t think that matters. What matters is what a jury will think. And how hard will it be for an attorney to paint a picture that this could have been them?
I dunno, if I am in k-mart am I allowed to stay there no matter what, if k-mart employees ask me to leave?
They could surely refund the ticket.
I think you’re radically underestimating the “right” of the passenger here. The right not to be beat up, absolutely. The right to stay on the flight no matter what… eh notsomuch.
The complication is that overbooking makes sense. I see it less and less often, but you’ll still regularly see empty seats on an airplane, you just get no-shows. And that’s pretty much flushing money down the toilet to an airline. But then you get the flipside, everyone shows up and suddenly you’ve got a problem. The absolutely absurd thing is that this got to actually dragging a guy out of a seat he paid for and off the plane. I’m curious to see how successful United is at shutting this down because I could seriously see people avoiding flying them, given the option.
Obviously not, because look where we are. And it could very easily be illegal if they pass a law making it illegal. Hell, the FAA could just say tomorrow that airlines can’t do it anymore and they’d be shit out of luck. They wont given the political landscape, but they easily could.
They’re overselling a product and then fucking people over. They get away with it since most of the time nothing comes of it and no one gives a shit.
It would have to get to jury, which is unlikely. A judge would kill the case before it got there.
They could have some sort of civil case, but again, unlikely since your rights in an airport/on a plane are effectively non-existent.
But the airline already got the money for those seats. They’re basically trying to get extra money. Sure they can probably get MORE money if people don’t show, but they’re selling seats that aren’t there and banking on people missing flights. I can’t think of other situations where a company would get away with that.
Pretty sure people have a right not to have the shit kicked out of them. Half the planet has seen the video by now. The punitive damages will be massive. Look, I think we live an a radically over-litigious society, but this guy is going to deserve every penny he can squeeze.
That’s what I mean though, if the seat is empty they could have gotten money out of it and it’s a lost opportunity. That’s not in itself wrong. They just totally blew the inevitable conflict resolution here. Guy digs in his heels and says he won’t go, well all right. Talk to the person sitting next to him for pete’s sake. Don’t send in the goons to drag him off. You’d think that’s a no brainer but here we are.
I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. Again, on a plane, you have basically no rights and not without reason.
Those both popped up in the last hour or so and we’ve had this talk in another thread when it came to some other silly situation where someone got pulled off a plane for no good reason.
Edit:
Also, in these situations they almost never let the people they are going to bump board the damned plane. They bump them before boarding. That they didn’t seems really odd, so maybe there is some loophole, but I doubt it.
United’s limit for these things is $800 according to people on the internet (YMMV ha!).
Hey, I found the actual DoT rules for bumping compensation!
[quote]
Bumping. Today’s rule doubles the amount of money passengers are eligible to be compensated for in the event they are involuntarily bumped from an oversold flight. Currently, bumped passengers are entitled to cash compensation equal to the value of their tickets, up to $400, if the airline is able to get them to their destination within a short period of time (i.e., within 1 to 2 hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights and 1 to 4 hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for international flights). Bumped passengers are currently entitled to double the price of their tickets, up to $800, if they are delayed for a lengthy period of time (i.e., over two hours after their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights and over 4 hours after their originally scheduled arrival time for international flights). Under the new rule, bumped passengers subject to short delays will receive compensation equal to double the price of their tickets up to $650, while those subject to longer delays would receive payments of four times the value of their tickets, up to $1,300. Inflation adjustments will be made to those compensation limits every two years.[/quote]
I’m not sure why United was still going by the $400/$800 compensation, when the DoT rules say this was increased to $650/$1300 in 2011.
Edit: Oh! It’s a teeny bit more now.
[quote]
If the airline arranges substitute transportation that is scheduled to arrive at your destination between one and two hours after your original arrival time (between one and four hours on international flights), the airline must pay you an amount equal to 200% of your one-way fare to your final destination that day, with a $675 maximum.
If the substitute transportation is scheduled to get you to your destination more than two hours later (four hours internationally), or if the airline does not make any substitute travel arrangements for you, the compensation doubles (400% of your one-way fare, $1350 maximum).[/quote]
Yeah bumping the amount is a no-brainer, really.
I actually agree it won’t ever get to a courtroom, because the press is going to be so awful I imagine they will rush to settle out of court.
Regardless of whether United had the right to do what it did, in this day and age of ubiquitous cell phone cameras and social media, it’s not a good move from a PR standpoint.
My son’s high school group was flying back from Wyoming last summer and the plane coming home was overbooked. Delta needed two additional seats, some sort of emergency situation where the two people they were trying to board absolutely had to fly out on that flight. No clue if they were employees or just customers with complex connecting flights. In any event, the plane was 3/4 full of high school guys and chaperones, so only about 1/4 of the passengers could even give up their seats if they wanted to (no way the high school was going to leave students or chaperones stranded in Wyoming). Delta kept raising the stakes until it reached two tickets on another airline leaving that night (this was in the morning), a $1000 voucher for future travel with Delta and $400 cash. They got their 2 people.
The funny part was that my son said when they initially offered only $200 and tickets later that day every single high school guy on the plane was like “Can I do it?!!”. $200 for a few hours stuck in a Wyoming airport sounds like a terrible deal to us adults, but to a high school kid it’s like being paid to sit around and play on your phone all day.
EDIT : And yeah, United will settle out of court with this guy for a hefty sum of money. Even though they may have been legally within their rights to forcefully evict him from his seat, beating the shit out of him using airport police borders on assault and is terrible optics to potential future customers. Given that the guy is a doctor, I suspect he won’t settle for a few grand and some free travel, he’s going to want life changing money.