FWIW wife got off UAL flight yesterday. Upon landing the pilot said thanks for flying the friendly skies. And the cabin erupted in laughter.

Not good UAL.

With no admission of wrongdoing

I expect what this means to the rest of us is, any time, any carrier needs to remove a a passenger, or 3, they will de-plane ALL passengers. ...and then let only certain people back on.

They need a sign that says, you must have paid "X" amount to be assured of a seat.

Said that very thing to my wife last night, they could have avoided this if they had done just that and you can bet your ass it's the new protocol going forward.

^^Most likely scenario, IMO, with and undisclosed amount.

The cat is out of the bag on this one for United. They want to avoid a public trial at all costs as it would only keep the incident in the public eye for months/years. They want it behind them asap as the public outcry will only gain momentum the longer it is replayed/discussed in social and msm. The longer this is a media story, the more the competition will leverage it to their benefit and the deeper will be the damage to United's bottom line. They want this over, soon.

However, if United feels it's being exploited in any settlement offer, they will risk a trial.

United's best defense at trial is that they did not cause the injuries to the passenger, it was the Chicago security police who were responsible. United only committed a breach of contract, if anything, and should not be held responsible for physical or emotional injuries caused by another party. They will try to weasel out of the breach by parsing the words of the "contract of carriage" fine print. A good lawyer will pick apart their defense before the eyes of the public and United will look like the weasels they are, but they may be successful is separating their offense, removing a seated passenger who they are obligated to transport, from the damage of the removal itself, which is the responsibility of the Chicago security force.

How will this argument sit with a jury? How will it sit with the public? Does United, a service industry, want to be seen as a giant corporation that's trying to pass the buck on responsibility for the treatment of a paying customer? The videos of the incident and the initial responses by the CEO are forever on the internet. United wants this over. They don't want a trial unless it's absolutely necessary.

The fall out of all of this? Quite possibly United and other carriers will revise their contract fine print to now include the right to remove a seated passenger at their discretion. Overbooking will not stop. Bumping before boarding will not stop. Now, a passenger's right to transport may be lost even after he is seated.

Something to think about.

Yep. This is guaranteed. It's not like they'll stop treating passengers like cattle any time soon.

Can you imagine the delays that would ripple out from that?

Sadly true.

A few years ago I was talking with a guy that worked for me about hating to fly. He decided that the airlines needed to have a new class: Human Class, where they treat you like a human, give you a seat for a human, leg room for a human... well you get the drift.

If you are not in 1st Class then you are essentially garbage to them. And sometimes in 1st its not much better.

This is just one of at least two reasons why this is unlikely to happen.^^

The delay caused by deplaning all passengers, with their carry-ons, then re-boarding a full flight, will certainly cause delays that ripple through the entire system. Delays are to be avoided at all cost, that's why bumping happens before boarding the flight, especially for over bookings. Is an airline going to risk delaying flights elsewhere in the country so they can seat a frequent flyer in lieu of a regular customer? And, of course, what airline wants a reputation for not being on time? Who wants to fly an airline from Los Angeles that may be delayed because they can't smoothly accommodate overbooking in Dallas?

Second, if all are deplaned and then some of the original passengers are not allowed back on, what will their reaction be? What would your reaction be? Unless they are re-boarding a different aircraft that has a smaller capacity, someone's going to be very upset that the seat they once occupied is now occupied by someone else for no good reason. Lawsuit in the making, along with bad PR that will swirl through the internet immediately. Even if the crew announced to the passengers that all will deplane because of overbooking and some may not be returning, that will cause a PR outrage as it will be a violation of the contract of carriage unless the terms have been changed. It would be a very public display of how the airline is making the passenger pay for the airline's incompetence.

Can you imagine the millions of $'s lost to bad PR in this viral vid world? :-/

In other airline news, as a Delta frequent flier I had my travel last week totally screwed up by the storms at ATL on Wednesday. This included 5 hours of quality time sitting on the ramp in Montgomery, AL because of ATL being closed. I finally did reach my destination of Charlotte, albeit about 12 hours late. My Thursday flight home through ATL was delayed due to the lingering effect of the closures, and I ultimately had to grab a United flight home on Friday morning. BUT, today I received an email from Delta apologizing for the inconvenience and stating that their response to the weather was less than ideal. But more than just an email, they also gifted me 20,000 miles, which is essentially a free domestic round-trip flight. I typically find Delta customer service to be far superior to United, but wonder if this would have happened without the United debacle last week.

I was thinking about this in some idle mental time. I don't know if this was mentioned previously, and I don't feel like going back through 15 pages to find out: it appears to me that the flight wasn't over-booked, but rather, they needed to "un-book" it to accommodate their crew. I've been seeing all these stories about airline booking polices vs profits, etc but in reality none of that seems like it was really relevant.

I also thought of a different analog for this scenario: you're at the toy store and walking out the door with your recently-purchased Tickle Me Elmo, when the store manager comes up to you and says you can't leave the store with it because the store is now out of stock and one of the employees needs it for his kid's birthday. You don't want to give it up, and eventually mall security kicks your ass and takes it from you.

I work at a hospital. We were having a meeting about our hospice unit and the hospice unit's manager said that sometimes due to an open room at another hospice unit they may move a patient from our hospital to that one. I said "Just don't remove them like United removes their passengers".Rim Shot! The entire meeting of 15 people cracked up. :D

Check post 261, top of page 14. Post mortem of sorts from an attorney.



My analogy was along the lines of, You've gone to the airport in your SUV to pick someone up.

At the same time Rick Lee shows up to to pick up his wifes family.

Of course Rick rode a bike. He gets there and realizes all they **** just ain't gonna fit on the back of his scoot.

So Rick walks over to you, pulls one of his ever present spoons and busts one off into your kneecap then drives off in your SUV.

Yes, it was mentioned a few times in this thread and most of the media mention the removal to make room for crew rather than an over-booking situation. However, as days roll by, the short hand version sloppily moves from this removal to a discussion on over- booking in general which confuses the issue. Yes, this was unique and had nothing to do with over-booking. It had to do with removing seated passengers to accommodate crew. Period.

Your analogy is close to correct, IMO. Maybe a bit closer would be if the store manager was to have sent some Elmos to another outlet but failed to hold some off the shelves. Then, when he realized a customer bought the last one, he demands you return it, offers more money or store credit, you refuse and he calls mall security. Details don't really matter. What matters is that in both cases, the customer is forced to pay for a mistake of the vendor, be it a toy store or United Airlines, and when they refuse, they are forced to comply.

My reaction depends on whether Paul Blart shows up to collect the toy. If he does I'm going to knock is fat behind off that scooter. :cool: