Originally Posted by
Deltahater
sorry, but you have clearly no idea what you are talking about. DOT cannot make any airline do anything. All DOT can do is fine an airline for a violation. The airline may not even pay then.
Pretty much this ^ - even if DoT fines UA, UA may refuse to pay the fine and only a federal judge can make them pay it. To me it seems more likely that the case would be thrown out because even DoT would probably side with UA (as DoT already said that its rules are NOT to protect abuse of genuine mistakes such as this one)