NELG

Why aren't we talking about this?

This forum is lacking hard in discussions, let's start talking about stuff and bring some action back

I don't understand how this happened. I thought nowadays when they oversold tickets they stopped people at check-in if there were too many people and it was a first-come-first-served thing.

Did the plane actually take off after this?

If I'm not mistaken, something went weird with the system, and the system told them it was a bigger plane that it actually was?

So, I think what happened was, they thought they had X amount of seats, they sold Y amount of tickets, where the plane they had, had Z seats, where Z is less than both X and Y..

Cho wrote:first-come-first-served thing.

This is the part I don't get though.. like I can understand how they had too many people trying to get on a plane, but why would they make someone who is already in their seat and settled in leave?

Moe, can you reference the plane size thing? I can't find anything about it. If it's only the cabin crew who didn't have seats, I find it difficult to believe a plane would be four seats shorter than another for the same airline. Though I guess perhaps they had for some reason not reserved the same seats the cabin crew are always in?

The overbooking seats thing is ridiculous but it's easy money for them, and some airlines will only oversell economy seats so they can put people up a class if there aren't enough seats. I understand the airline did offer compensation initially and it wasn't taken up.

I suppose you could frame a weak argument in favour of reselling that if airlines didn't do it some people wouldn't be able to get that flight in the first place. Very weak argument though.

I don't have that article anymore, but I'll try to find another one.

On the plane this took place on, it only had 70-80 seats, so 4 seats is quite a few on that small of a plane.

idk, I can't find it anymore...

It was one of the articles my phone had linked me in my news feed

Either way, I can't source it, so... never mind on my part

As I understand it, they overbooked the plane. (Which seem to happen more often) The passangers still waiting for a seat , who were the last ones to arive, were United employees, not cabin crew for that particular plane. They then asked among the passengers for volunteers to give up their seat, to which no one responded. The cabin crew subsequently (do I use that word correctly here?) pointed out people to leave the plane. This man, who is a doctor, was one of them, but refused to leave, (because he had to work the next day) and rightfully so. He then was dragged out by policeofficers.

In my opinion, if a plane is overbooked, which should not happen, the last passengers to arrive have to reschedule their flight, even if they are emlpoyees of the airline involved. They of all people should know that they have to be on time for the flight. I would not have given up my seat either.
The message United is giving IMHO is that their employees are more important than human lives.

[quote="LaLou"In my opinion, if a plane is overbooked, which should not happen, the last passengers to arrive have to reschedule their flight, even if they are employees of the airline involved. [/quote]

While I agree with this, it's a little more complicated than "just reschedule their flight", because, the reason they needed to get on the plane was because they were needed to crew an uncrewed flight. If they hadn't been on that specific flight, the plane they were supposed to crew the next day would have been uncrewed, and would have caused an entire flight to cancel.

Also, since these crew members that boarded last minute, didn't have a ticket, the plane, according to United, wasn't "overbooked" or "oversold"

That being said, I do still agree with you that they should have handled the situation better.

I have sources this time.