You should try and understand staffing legalities and logistics for the airlines. There is no such thing as planning for issues that cause a down line crew to become illegal in terms of maximum FAA requirements. There are hundreds of things that can and do go wrong in a typical flight crew's 8 hours in the air day that the airlines can neither predict nor anticipate.
This flight was apparently not oversold until United needed to get a crew of 4 to Louisville to relieve a crew that had gone illegal and there were now 130 people that were going to be inconvenienced.
This board being full of capitalists, as a company that is in the business of making money, what would you do. Let me see, we've had suggestions of just pulling a plane complete with crew just sitting around to fly them there to magically chartering a private jet to just whisk them away etc. etc. Let me see, United listed 4523 daily departures in 2016 so we should have 4523 jets and crews just sitting around to cover any of these unpredictable delays?
We have become a nation of 330 million special interest groups each feeling they are they only person that really matters. Inconvenience and compensate 4 or 130. You decide.

I would have gotten a company vehicle and had an employee drive the crew the 4 hours to Louisville. Alternatively, I would have chartered Net Jets to take them. Found another flight on another airline. Any other myriad of courses of action that did not involve removing paying/seated passengers.

OR I would have put 4 folding chairs in the back of the plane.

OR used jump seats...

Assuming that is not an acceptable answer:

I would have either upped the ante on $$$ being offered for people to give up their seats. Then last to check in first off.

They also could have used shame to get the guy off. Ladies and Gents, we have a situation that will require 4 of you to leave the plane. Mr. Dude in B2 is one of those passengers. He is refusing to leave the plane. We will not depart until he does so. You will be delayed until such time as those 4 persons get off this plane...

But I would not have had wanna be NFL players, wanna be Assassin's Creed guys, and wanna be Wyatt Erp's dragging a 69yo man off the plane.

More:
1- Apparently this flight had available 1st class seating.

2- Chicago airport police (un-armed) are trained at the same academy as the CPD. They've been pushing for being armed but this incident may put that in jeopardy.

(Side note: The vid shows those Chicago airport police in a halfazz uniform. Not only was this demonstration a grade F, they sure don't look professional.)

3- CEO Munoz, lied or apparently doesn't know their policies.

https://apnews.com/4e461a8a2ea144a7a7c739366caa79f5/Text-of-letter-from-United-CEO-defending-employees?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitt er&utm_medium=APCentralRegion


The Transportation Department says airlines must “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.” There’s no evidence United did that. In an internal email published by the Associated Press, United CEO Oscar Munoz said company employees “followed our involuntary denial of boarding process (including offering up to $1,000 in compensation).” But he didn’t say whether those employees followed government rules, including issuing the written statement and giving an explanation for why a given passenger was singled out for bumping.

United’s Rule 25

Rule 25 of United’s “contract of carriage”—which is basically the legal fine print governing passenger flights—contains detailed procedures for how to handle overbooked flights on which passengers need to be bumped, either voluntarily or involuntarily. But there’s no mention of a written statement or an explanation offered to passengers who are bumped against their will. So unless there are other United procedures that aren’t public, the carrier’s official policy seems to exclude what the government requires.

There’s another wrinkle. Rule 25 deals almost entirely with passengers denied boarding—in other words, people who never get on a plane. But in the Chicago incident, the passenger had already boarded when United employees told him he had to get off. Again, unless United has an unpublished policy dealing with this scenario, it’s not addressed in the contract of carriage. So even if United followed its own procedures, it would have violated government rules.

The whole incident seems to have arisen from an unusual situation unanticipated by the airline. United says the flight was already fully boarded when four crew members approached the gate, saying they needed to board the plane to get to Louisville, where the flight was headed, or else a subsequent United departure out of Louisville would have to be canceled. So United made the probably rational decision that it was cheaper to bump four passengers and pay them for their troubles, than to leave the crew members in Chicago and cancel a Louisville departure.

If interested in the case, here's a good video discussion from Chicago WTTW.
April 11, 2017 - Full Show | Chicago Tonight | WTTW

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5YGc4zOqozo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

United runs leaner on staff than most any other major carrier. The result of this is they duty out their pilots at the end of the day if they suffer a minor delay anywhere through the day. A late day flight leaving 15 minutes late turns their flight crew to pumpkins because of the way they organize their staff. The fact they needed to get a flight crew to destination is an organizational failure on their part, not an "unforeseen circumstance". You can't claim that when it is part of their daily operations shuttling flight crews around to cover minor delays because they simply fly their pilots too close to limits.
They could have extended their duty day under FAA regs if they had not already accumulated too many hours.
This was a 100 percent preventable occurrence that was handled about as badly as it could be. Complete and utter failure on the part of the organization, and then compounded by totally asinine press releases. I hope it truly costs them millions and serves to effect some change to how airlines are allowed to operate.
In the air, the captain should certainly be the ultimate authority. On the ground, bs...he's just a bus driver at the end of the day, pilots are not any kind of special authority. The unquestioning back up of airline staff by airport police has to stop, you can't treat people like crap and then quell all unrest using the cops, again that is bs.

Let me give you a few big whacks in the melon and see how reasonable and rational you are.

No, he was dragged out and in the process "accidentally" smashed his face on the arm rest and was knocked unconscious.

This is going to hurt United, as it should. They did everything wrong, then, in an impressive display of ass-hattery, their CEO made it worse.

Matthews has the right idea of using ground transport to move 4 passengers or crew the 300 miles to Lewisville.

It would have been cheaper to hire a limo to take 4 people to their destination. Combine this with the $1350 per seat and they might have got some takers.

News Flash!

Pentagon awards contract to United Airlines to forcibly remove Assad

The PR hits keep coming!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/united-airlines-passenger-threatened-handcuffs-073030438.html

United: Cops will drag you off.
American: Same
Delta: Same
Spirit: You have to drag yourself off, but we will punch you in the face.
7:59 AM - 10 Apr 2017

Funny thing about that article. They have a graph showing number of "involuntary denied boardings," which of course has nothing to do with the article to which it is attached. Story is about passengers forcibly removed from their seats, not denied boarding.

How else do you think United keeps its numbers low!? SmileWavy

Every deviation from the norm is now on video...every company in a service industry has to prepare for the impact of poor "optics".

No doubt United has rules governing "re-accommodating" passengers ("Don't re-accommodate me, Bro!"). I am sure those rules are being reviewed by United and every other airline given the Meme-Monkeys assault on United. What the FAA rules allow, and whether or not the "Captain" is in charge is wholly and completely irrelevant.

I would adjust to the new reality and change my "re-accommodating" procedures.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1492030194.png

I wonder how 'bubba' cop would feel if this happened to his grandma. LOL
Just look at that turd cop! Could that guy even pass a -real- physical ability test? Maybe the anchor in a tug O war. I guess that doesn't matter anymore.

Chicago PD passes just about any recruit.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-police-academy-met-20170314-story.html

http://l3.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/EU...53568d3ccd0698

https://s.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dim...00.16%2BAM.png

I worked with an ex-cop whom left the force because he couldn't stand the mentality and wrongfully forced to be a 'thug'. He was serious.

Told me one night was in a squad with three others, found a homeless black man on a sidewalk park bench. A few of the cops beat the crap out of the poor bum and told to never come back to the town. This former cop told me he didn't intervene and only stood back and watched.