Man pulled off of overbooked flight UA3411 (ORD-SDF) 9 Apr 2017 {Settlement reached}
 

http://www.courier-journal.com/story...lle/100274374/
I get annoying pop ups on my iPad.


https://mobile.twitter.com/Tyler_Bri...14160042106880

Overbooked and they have to pull people off the plane? What a horrible way to run things.

And he gets back on somehow?
https://mobile.twitter.com/Tyler_Bri...663552/video/1

Love to get the inside story on this.

Definitely bad form for the gate agents to board passengers they may have to IDB, but the passenger should have gotten off the plane when asked. The FAA is not amused by passengers who fail to comply with crewmember instructions.

Horrible
 

Horrible experience - I cannot understand that an airline is doing this in front of all the passengers - glad that videos made available.

United this year as far as I can tell is doing a horrible job - experienced mechanical breakdowns this and last week. I can only recommend United CEO and executives to pay close attention to a deteriorating performance in 2017.

Reading the article I'm a bit confused. It says they needed four people to give up their seats because the flight was overbooked. But it also says they needed the seats for a crew going to SDF to work a flight in the morning....then also called them standby. If they were going to work a flight, they wouldn't be standby, they'd be deadheading. The only thing that would make sense would be that something happened last minute with whatever crew was supposed to work whatever SDF flight Monday morning, and needed to get a replacement crew there on this flight. But that would also mean that the flight wasn't actually technically overbooked with revenue passengers, just that the best way to inconvenience the least amount of people was to bump four people off this flight and get the crew on vs have to cancel or severely delay flight out of SDF tomorrow. That's always a crappy situation, but ultimately makes sense to me.

I suppose it's extremely rare that an airline is unable to find volunteers out of 50+ people, especially given the high money offers. I personally didn't even know what the procedure was for involuntarily denying boarding, but I can definitely see how it can cause a lot of tension. Then again, the flight could've been just as easily canceled for any number of reasons, and the net result would've been the same (worse, technically) for that individual passenger, so I don't quite understand the extreme reaction on his part.

All that said, that video looks horrible. The security officer seemed to go way overboard on the amount of force acceptable in removing the man, who didn't even seem to be aggressive. And to me that is by far the worst part of the entire situation. Which really had nothing to do with United, as he's unaffiliated with them...but yet it'll just be another negative story attached to United's name.

A complete embarrassment for United, let alone a doctor trying to see patients. They should just increase the offer if that's the case.

The pax shouldn't have resisted the crew or police officers. Not fun to get kicked off a plane but he could've taken one of several later flights and gotten to SDF with a minor delay the same night. Instead he got arrested.

Question. If the airline suddenly discovers it needs 4 seats for a crew set to be sent somewhere, and then ask passengers to give up those seats AFTER they have boarded, doesn't the aircraft then:

-get delayed as the baggage crews search for checked in luggage of the 4 passengers who gave up their seats?

-Delay the departure of the flight?

-Shouldn't the boarding agent hold the minimum 4 seats until 1 hour before flight, then knowing they don't need those 4 seats for emergencies and offering those 4 seats to standby passengers?

Question: if a flight is already full, is it expensive to charter a pvt jet to haul the over booked passengers and the deadhead crew to their destination and to avoid all the hassles and problems that would come their way once they start messing about with the 4 seat search?

This happened to me in January. Well not me refusing to get off the plane and the police getting involved.

I had a boarding pass (that had been issued in FRA) and was also on my app. Scan the BP to be told my F seat had been given to someone else as my flight was late but I made it to the gate before everyone else from my flight and they all got their seats. They asked if I was okay to sit in Y and I said yes. I just wanted to get home (this was the last leg SFO-SAN). Got on the plane, put my luggage in the overhead, sat in the my newly assigned seat 7A. Then they come back and say I need to get off the plane they do not have a seat for me and a standby passager was getting my seat. Back up the jet way and GA asked me why I refused the Y seat, and I said I did not refuse it and in fact sat in it for a few minutes until told I needed to get off the plane.

Wrote to UA who apologised and said they would look into the situation and get back to me. Of course they never did get back to me to explain or offer any compensation.

So do not know how and why it happened and I was upset as I just wanted to get home - i sympathize /understand the guy not wanting to give up his seat when he was already seated.

BTW - @wolf72, UA did not remove my luggage from the flight. My checked luggage was waiting for me in SAN when I arrived on a later flight. So they do not remove luggage in this situation (apparently).

That's bad. But it show's they had no initiative to check if your flight had landed, despite being a little bit late, or not and to make sure your connection was not screwed up or anything.

This doesn't happen with asian airliners I fly with when I have connections so I wonder if it's a matter of people not doing their job or the system they use being an outdated system and them not being able to access information to keep them informed of your departure and arrival for the connecting flight.

And now all the outbound flights from SDF this morning (Monday) are running a 1+ hours late due to "operational difficulties".

Bad form to let a passenger on the airplane then to remove them. Better would have been, offer $1000 bump, get volunteers and announce that the plane would be cancelled if nobody volunteers.

Not really. A few years ago I was in the UC at NRT, and the CSRs were vainly trying to solicit volunteers for downgrading from J to E+ for a 13 hour NRT-ORD flight. No one was taking that offer, no matter how high it got.

Apparently the passenger was a physician and he needed to make home to see his patients at the hospital the next day.

I would have been ticked to get pulled off but ORD-SDF is drivable (5.5 hours) if his obligations were truly "urgent".

I think it would be more accurate the say "the passenger claimed he was a physician..."

No one has yet published his name, so there would be no way to verify this. If someone wanted to make himself sound important, this would certainly be a thing that they might say.

What was the highest the offers went? I would want a refund of the price different between J and E+ as well so it would have to be a pretty high offer.

The best offer I have witnessed was a $1000 from SJC to Austin on WN. I had a meeting so could not take it, but when I arrived in Austin meeting was cancelled. The lucky guy who got it must have been loving life.

I don't think the FAA has the power to enforce passengers to follow "all" crewmember instructions. They don't have absolute power, like you are implying. Specifically it is for "safety", and this has no relationship to safety at all.

Yep, I have driven ORD-LEX a zillion times. Easy.

United is getting crucified at the reddit thread. Completely opposite reaction from here, where many of you are backing the airline. Front page as well. Horrible, horrible optics for UA.

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comm...booked_united/

I read the Reddit thread this morning and then came here, knowing exactly what I'd find and the 180 on opinions. Somewhere along the line things went horribly wrong.

I think United should have offered more than the $800 that's being reported as the final offer before the IDB started. Hell on Friday morning Delta STARTED offers at $1000 for three volunteers from my TUL-ATL flight.

In today's day and age, any slight confrontation is going to be recorded multiple times and uploaded to the internet within minutes. You have to know that, you have to be aware of that. It's United's right to pull anyone off their plane, but man this is a bad look for UA.

I am not envious of United's PR team today.

I bet if United offered $500 plus the cost of a rental car in compensation, they would have had more than 4 volunteers.

I live in STL, same distance from ORD and I would take that offer in a heartbeat if I were headed back home to STL from ORD.

I'm wondering how they chose this guy. Why him? I wonder if he got on standby?

Can anyone shed some light on how they choose IDBs?

this is absolutely disgusting!!! shame on united, there is no excuse for this whatsoever!!!

Very classy airline, they are not being regarded as the classiest of the three legacies for no reason obviously.

Why didn't they book their crew on other flights or increase passenger compensation? Delta was giving $1300 vouchers.

The violence used against this man is what bothers me the most. Absolutely no reason at all to do that.

On the reddit thread there is a different video of the guy coming back on the flight with his face covered in blood. United had the right to get their crew on the flight but they handled this in a pretty ...... way.

Why not look offer to put people on a flight to Lexington or Evansville? Or offer to pay for someones rental car + some bucks on top of that, and an autographed picture of Oscar giving you the thumbs up?

Yes, that other video is really distressing, I can see how little kids were crying.

Sadly, this may be the straw for me.

They quit at 800$? There needs to be a bit more disclosure here. He was given a seat and let on the plane. If (and I stress IF) they were really sending a crew back, that's not overbooked. If (and I stress IF) the guy was a physician and attending the next morning, that should have stopped the process. If (and again, I stress...) you're telling me that the GAs don't have the authority to offer double the RT tickets?

My God what a nightmare.

I haven't been able to get cost-comparative United flights all year. I'm not sure I want to keep going like this- If I switch to Delta right now with a status match I can put 35k miles in in a month. I understand United dumped a ton of $$ into Polaris but making it up this way?

total BS. Paid passenger who needs to get to his destination is ASSAULTED for not "volunteering" his seat for a crew member. The airline should keep raising the offer until they get volunteers or find another solution for their crew issues. UA is going to get a PR sh**storm for this. And they deserve to get sued for it. FAIL.

I don't understand some of the replies here.

The answer is simple, when UA overbooks they should up the offer until they get takers. Its cheaper than all this bad PR.

And why in the world would they let them board, knowing they would have to remove 4 people.

Obviously security went overboard and thats not UAs fault, but the entire situation would have been avoided if they had simply done the above.

Hopefully he sues them and gets at least $100k for this. Passengers should also get at least $1k in vouchers for the trauma witnessing this. Disgusting.

I hope the video makes the 6pm news tonight.

Absolutely... While the airline has every right to remove a passenger from their plane for any reason, they chose to have a passenger assaulted rather than paying a bit more compensation to volunteers.

I hope the extra few hundred dollars they saved were worth the PR nightmare.

Why in the world didn't they figure it out at the gate before boarding? Hoping for 4 no-shows? Pressure for an on-time departure figuring they could figure it out while boarding progressed? Could have been avoided by figuring it out before boarding. If they end up with less onboard than expected, they can still board one or more people selected for IDB.

Alot of outraged passengers over the guy being dragged off but at this point what is the crew & security supposed to do? Let the guy stay because he threw a hissy fit and pick a more compliant passenger? And clearly something not right with the guy they dragged off when he ran back onto the aircraft.

I got $700 to VDB on EWR-BWI. Flew EWR-DCA and was taxi'ed to BWI, ended up arriving an hour behind my original flight. Made my day :)

If there were several later flights as you say, why did UA also offer a hotel? Can you list what times the later flights departed since it would be as you say a minor delay ? If so, why didn't they just put the dead heading crew on those flights and save all this trouble?

Until you fall asleep on that overnight drive. This was the last flight that night.

UA should have moved its dead head crew earlier in the day. UA blew it on this one.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story...lle/100274374/

This article has some answers


I am having the same issue. I have tried to quit UA but up until the last 6 months or so, they have had the best prices for me.

Ace victim blaming here.

Disgraceful all around, but the police use of force is particularly disgusting, to me.

Sorry, I do not undestand some of the posts supporting the airline and the law enforcement officer.

In “civilized” countries of Europe (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, … [you name it]) the law enforcement officer would go to prison, because of “exaggerated” violence and aggravated personal injury of the passenger.

In Europe (all of EU and associated countries) customers have the legal right to board a flight they are booked on and checked in. The airline has to increase the offer to whatever amount, to find a volunteer or find other means to bring the client to its destination with minimal impact on arrival time (e.g. chartering an additional aircraft).

And it works. Never seen such pictures from Europe.

This will be a very expensive lesson for UA, and maybe they will learn.

Maybe he was wearing leggings.