Current Events > United Airlines Staff Will No Longer Take Seats of Boarded Passengers

(+) Yeah! (+)

The problem isn't overbooking because it's necessary for ticket pricing to be as low as they are now. The problem is how United handled the situation. Like psychologically wise, people are less likely to want to volunteer their seat when they're already seated vs. when they're not. If they wanted to forcefully have bumped a passenger, they should've done it before they boarded. Once they boarded, they should've kept piling on incentives after incentive (this is what SWA did when they were overbooked) so they can finally get someone to volunteer. United when the cheap route and stopped at $800's (and it's not even cash, it a fucking voucher) and now is facing a PR disaster. Hell I can imagine the PR department playing russian roulette instead of actually trying to control the situation.
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ROD posted...

I love how when it comes to individual people, CE and society in general is cruel as fuck ("personal accountability!", "be fit to survive!", "bootstraps!", "pull your own weight!") but when it is about billionaire corporations people suddenly acre about their "feelings" and care about their "thin margins" and losing even an inch of profitability, literally corporate wellfare mentality.

I don't think this has anything to do with being pro united. I hate United. I like the airlines over booking flights as I don't want my tickets to double.
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Seriously. The problem isn't that someone had to be removed. The problem is United instead of paying for their own mistake physically asdaukted someone.

They could have given the guy $2500 dollars and I bet he takes it. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the now over $1billion dollar hit their market value has taken.

Just overall bad business.
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If ticket prices have to go up in order for people to get what they paid for then so be it.

It's a bad practice.
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

I like the airlines over booking flights as I don't want my tickets to double.

buy your tickets in advance.
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Kim Kusanagi posted...

Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

I like the airlines over booking flights as I don't want my tickets to double.

buy your tickets in advance.

I do. I usually by tickets 3 months out and fly on off days to keep ticket prices down. That doesn't change the fact that if they didn't overbooked costs would be pushed onto the consumers raising prices.

Im going to Vegas in June. Paid $120 round trip. I enjoy flying dirt cheap.
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MrDrMan posted...

If ticket prices have to go up in order for people to get what they paid for then so be it.

Eh, as a person who has to fly to the west to the east coast because of my job, a lot, I prefer having my ticket as low as they can be.
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"I am NEVER flying United Airlines again.... Unless they are the cheapest flight available, or have the most convenient times"
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Dustin1280 posted...

"I am NEVER flying United Airlines again.... Unless they are the cheapest flight available, or have the most convenient times"

Nah i still won't fly United. It's not even this. I decided long before this that I wouldn't. Southwest or virgin aren't much more expensive for a much better service. Although I haven't flown virgin since Alaska bought them and I think last time I flew they charged me to pick my seat. A very united move.
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I understand overbooking flights, i understand bumping passengers for deadheading crew, inconveniencing 4 people vs 70+, but the plane never should have been boarded until the matter was resolved, also there is a legal maximum of compensation to be offered if you are involuntarily bumped, but that max is $1350, United wanted to be cheap and force people off at $800
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

Im going to Vegas in June. Paid $120 round trip. I enjoy flying dirt cheap.

Nice, where you flying from? I'm going in September and the cheapest right now is $170 for nonstop round trip.
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

That doesn't change the fact that if they didn't overbooked costs would be pushed onto the consumers raising prices.

not if there are more flights.
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Kim Kusanagi posted...

Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

That doesn't change the fact that if they didn't overbooked costs would be pushed onto the consumers raising prices.

not if there are more flights.

so instead of a 100 person plane selling 110 seats, you rather have two 55 seat flights full? that nearly doubles the cost to the airline while making the same in ticket sales, how to bankrupt an airline right there
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

Dustin1280 posted...

"I am NEVER flying United Airlines again.... Unless they are the cheapest flight available, or have the most convenient times"

Nah i still won't fly United. It's not even this. I decided long before this that I wouldn't. Southwest or virgin aren't much more expensive for a much better service. Although I haven't flown virgin since Alaska bought them and I think last time I flew they charged me to pick my seat. A very united move.

What would they need to do to get your business back
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too late lol
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

Southwest or virgin aren't much more expensive for a much better service

Yeah Southwest is almost always the cheapest and they don't charge for bags when I do need to check one. Never had a problem with them even when I missed an early morning flight because the security check took an hour for a damn 6 am flight that I got there at 5am for. They put me on the next flight. Only don't use them if they don't have a direct flight
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Nubcake13 posted...

I understand overbooking flights, i understand bumping passengers for deadheading crew, inconveniencing 4 people vs 70+, but the plane never should have been boarded until the matter was resolved, also there is a legal maximum of compensation to be offered if you are involuntarily bumped, but that max is $1350, United wanted to be cheap and force people off at $800

Delta is offering up to 10k I don't think you're right about the maximum.

Not an expert but I've seen multiple credible sources say Delta will now offer up to 10k.
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voluntarily bumping and involuntarily bumping have different rules

Involuntary Bumping

DOT requires each airline to give all passengers who are bumped involuntarily a written statement describing their rights and explaining how the carrier decides who gets on an oversold flight and who doesn't. Those travelers who don't get to fly are frequently entitled to denied boarding compensation in the form of a check or cash. The amount depends on the price of their ticket and the length of the delay:


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).

https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights
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AlisLandale posted...

Ignore NFG.

All she seems to know how to do is complain aboutnews being old.

"she"
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Everybody arguing about overbooking and it wasn't even an overbooked flight. the bumped people so that employees could take the seats. Because those employees needed to be where they were going.

goofdude posted...

Everybody arguing about overbooking and it wasn't even an overbooked flight. the bumped people so that employees could take the seats. Because those employees needed to be where they were going.

And it should have been straightened out in the lobby, not on the plane of already seated people.
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Am I the only one that sided with United?

I'm not saying everything went down great, overbooked tickets should be sold as such so the customer knows they may need to have their flight rescheduled.

What is the new policy for handling overbooked flights, first on? Eh, If I arrive early, whether I'm seated or not, I should get a seat over the pushy asshole that got in line first but arrived to the airport later than myself.

Do you even know what was going on? The guy wasn't a pushy asshole. He was even injured. Hell United didn't even hit the cap of offering money, which was 1200 iirc they stopped at 800. Wasn't even overbooked too boot. Everyone had their seat, but United wanted their employees to get a ride.
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While all of these sad goobers keep licking the boots of big airlines and pretending that stopping overselling the hell out of their flights will make them go out of business, this is what a decent airline does:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pilot-turns-around-manchester-airport-flight-to-australia-so-couple-could-say-goodbye-to-dying-a6979866.html

"A pilot who turned back a plane preparing to take off at Manchester Airport so a couple could say goodbye to their dying grandson has been praised as “truly amazing”."

See? Nobody went bankrupt for not beating the shit out of this elderly couple and helping them out.
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Nubcake13 posted...

that nearly doubles the cost to the airline while making the same in ticket sales, how to bankrupt an airline right there

not my problem
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voldothegr8 posted...

Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

Im going to Vegas in June. Paid $120 round trip. I enjoy flying dirt cheap.

Nice, where you flying from? I'm going in September and the cheapest right now is $170 for nonstop round trip.

From San Francisco. I think Southwest is actually running a deal that would be about 80 round trip but it ends just prior to my dates and starts again in August.

Kim Kusanagi posted...

Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

That doesn't change the fact that if they didn't overbooked costs would be pushed onto the consumers raising prices.

not if there are more flights.

They only have so many planes and can only have so many flights and the cost of flying is a big part of the ticket. This wouldn't help keep my ticket prices down unless.

emblem boy posted...

Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

Dustin1280 posted...

"I am NEVER flying United Airlines again.... Unless they are the cheapest flight available, or have the most convenient times"

Nah i still won't fly United. It's not even this. I decided long before this that I wouldn't. Southwest or virgin aren't much more expensive for a much better service. Although I haven't flown virgin since Alaska bought them and I think last time I flew they charged me to pick my seat. A very united move.

What would they need to do to get your business back

I don't know. Probably need a complete overhaul.

They kicked me off a plane. Wouldnt tell us why. I think my uncle was complained about for being drunk and they just kicked us all off. My uncle was in first class the rest were in coach. Our whole party was kicked off.

They did put us on the next flight which was direct and we beat our first flight but we had to hang out around Heathrow because they said they wouldn't ship our bags as the change wasn't their fault so we had to wait a few hours.

Next time flying to London we had a layover in DC and kept getting our flight pushed back do to weather. Went and explained that we were gonna miss our connection and they put us on a new flight. When they put us on a new flight they again didn't move the bags (this time they did ship em to us because we waited for our first flight and our bags never left dc). Coming back we were supposed to fly out of Belfast and have one layover. When we switched our flight coming to they canceled our return for missing our flight which left us standard in Belfast for a few hours. They eventually gave us 500 in vouchers each and then put us in a cab to Dublin. Flew out of Dublin, two layovers. The one in Chicago being 2 hours that became 6 because they didn't have a crew.

Flew to New York using those vouchers. Got delayed like 12 hours because of a malfunction with the plane.

They handled it and compensated us for the inconvenience but all these negative experiences (especially trip two) plus the fact that they nickel and dime everything and have a in my experience worse plane and unfriendly crew and I avoid them like the plague.
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This is very good progress, we need more policies to protect consumers.

are they going to be using ejaculation seats, you know the seats that eject you out of a car
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Cj_WlLL_VVlN posted...

They only have so many planes and can only have so many flights

They should buy more planes then.
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ROD posted...

See? Nobody went bankrupt for not beating the shit out of this elderly couple and helping them out.

The plane didn't even take off yet. There is almost no loss of money and anyone on the flight is likely perfectly fine with a small delay for an extraordinary circumstance. But rod is battling Kim for dumbest person in the topic it seems
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I Like Toast posted...

ROD posted...

See? Nobody went bankrupt for not beating the shit out of this elderly couple and helping them out.

The plane didn't even take off yet. There is almost no loss of money and anyone on the flight is likely perfectly fine with a small delay for an extraordinary circumstance. But rod is battling Kim for dumbest person in the topic it seems

Why so upset, underage user.
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> 14 year old account
> underage user

#kimmylogic
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I Like Toast posted...

> 14 year old account
> underage user

#kimmylogic

Yeah, that's very surprising for a user who insists he has a 160 IQ.
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I Like Toast posted...

> 14 year old account
> underage user

#kimmylogic

1. Not really stalking to check how old your account is.
2. Not really caring anyway.
3. Anyways I could still always use tropicalwood's "you stole user's account" claim.

Oh and here we have Addy riding on some other fella's wave because he just can't make a good troll post on his own. kek.
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Kim Kusanagi posted...

1. Not really stalking to check how old your account is

Even if we pretend we both haven't been posting for years the simple fact that I both have a space in my name and that it's a boring uninspiring name that would have been snagged early would be the kind of simple deductions a mensa member would make.

But as your entire post history stands proof of, simple logic is too difficult for you.
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I Like Toast posted...

the simple fact that I both have a space in my name

Come on now, do you really think I care about such trivial stupidity?

I Like Toast posted...

it's a boring uninspiring name that would have been snagged early

It wouldn't precisely because of that.
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judasmaiden15 posted...

are they going to be using ejaculation seats, you know the seats that eject you out of a car

Come on, is no one going to touch this lol
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Kim Kusanagi posted...

Come on now, do you really think I care about such trivial stupidity

> tries to use underage user as an argument
> I don't care about trivial things

#kimmylogic
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I Like Toast posted...

Kim Kusanagi posted...

Come on now, do you really think I care about such trivial stupidity

> tries to use underage user as an argument
> I don't care about trivial things

#kimmylogic

Thinks both things are relatable

#toastylogic
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relateable =/= related
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Lol at supporting overbookings
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AlabamaLove posted...

Lol at supporting overbookings

There's 3 things I care about when booking a flight

1.) Direct flight
2.) price
3.) time

overbooking makes #2 lower and gives me the potential when my travel is flexible to get a voucher for effectively a free flight. The risk of being overbooked and no one taking the vouchers, is about the same as the chance of kimmy making an intelligent post.
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I Like Toast posted...

AlabamaLove posted...

Lol at supporting overbookings

There's 3 things I care about when booking a flight

1.) Direct flight
2.) price
3.) time

overbooking makes #2 lower and gives me the potential when my travel is flexible to get a voucher for effectively a free flight. The risk of being overbooked and no one taking the vouchers, is about the same as the chance of kimmy making an intelligent post.

kimmy is like, 90x smarter than you.

You're the original CE contrarian. You'd argue in favor of poop if somebody posted "poop is terrible"
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time to breathe some common sense on this topic:

THE FLIGHT WASN'T OVERBOOKED!!! Turns out that United decided last minute they needed to get their employees to another airport to attend another flight the next day. They don't respect their own paying customers, so they thought they could simply tell a paying customer to fuck off.
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ROD posted...

kimmy is like, 90x smarter than you.

you're going to have to try harder than that to retake the lead roddy poo, kimmy's trying really hard. Also, weird how you responded nearly immediately to that post but ignored the other reply to your post that would have required you to make an actual relevant post to the topic. watsa mawter roddy pie :( :( :(

see, you'd think with your decade of experience by now you'd figure out how to take the cheap shot, and still be relevant to the topic.
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also, overbooking is not necessarily a "don't overbook a single seat or overbook a shitload of seats" question. Why not overbook a decent number of seats so this kind of stuff rarely happens? And if it rarely happens, they could afford to pay a shitload of actual cash to passengers in the rare times it actually happened.

How come say, Air France or KLM don't feel the need to kick people out of their seats and beat the shit out of them routinely just like US airlines do? They do overbook, just not as much
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ROD posted...

time to breathe some common sense on this topic:

THE FLIGHT WASN'T OVERBOOKED!!! Turns out that United decided last minute they needed to get their employees to another airport to attend another flight the next day. They don't respect their own paying customers, so they thought they could simply tell a paying customer to fuck off.

How dare united try and minorly inconvenience 4 people and handsomely reward them handsomely so that a flight of 200+ people wasn't inconvenienced.
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ROD posted...

also, overbooking is not necessarily a "don't overbook a single seat or overbook a shitload of seats" question. Why not overbook a decent number of seats so this kind of stuff rarely happens? And if it rarely happens, they could afford to pay a shitload of actual cash to passengers in the rare times it actually happened.

How come say, Air France or KLM don't feel the need to kick people out of their seats and beat the shit out of them routinely just like US airlines do? They do overbook, just not as much

This does rarely happen... I have never witnessed someone booted for that. They normally go off without a hitch and when they don't people take the vouchers. There's a reason this was news.
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ROD posted...

Why not overbook a decent number of seats so this kind of stuff rarely happens?

it does rarely happen.

ROD posted...

And if it rarely happens, they could afford to pay a shitload of actual cash to passengers in the rare times it actually happened.

they do. they offered $800, federal regulation is 2.5X ticket value up to 1300 maximum. these things have already been posted roddie poddy.

ROD posted...

How come say, Air France or KLM don't feel the need to kick people out of their seats and beat the shit out of them routinely just like US airlines do?

literally one of the top post on reddit at this very second is a european flight company that kicked a couple off and tried to tell them to wait 4 days.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39620088

thing is, most of the time when it happens people happily take the voucher, in the cases where no one does take the voucher, it doesn't result in someone being bloodied in the process of removing them from the plane.

and the flight was over booked

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/united-flight-passenger-dragged.html?_r=0

On Sunday, Mr. Bridges said that when he arrived at the gate about 20 minutes before boarding, United had announced that the flight was overbooked; the airline was offering $400 vouchers to anyone who would give up their seat, Mr. Bridges said.


As the passengers boarded the plane, “there was no indication anything was wrong,” Mr. Bridges said.

An airline employee came on board and said United needed four people to get off, Mr. Bridges said, adding that the airline had by then increased its incentive to an $800 voucher. The airline later said that it offered up to $1,000 in compensation.

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ROD posted...

I Like Toast posted...

AlabamaLove posted...

Lol at supporting overbookings

There's 3 things I care about when booking a flight

1.) Direct flight
2.) price
3.) time

overbooking makes #2 lower and gives me the potential when my travel is flexible to get a voucher for effectively a free flight. The risk of being overbooked and no one taking the vouchers, is about the same as the chance of kimmy making an intelligent post.

kimmy is like, 90x smarter than you.

You're the original CE contrarian. You'd argue in favor of poop if somebody posted "poop is terrible"

Let toasty be butthurt
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Literally taking a compliment from ROD because he happens to be on the same side of you in an argument.
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