They're switching IT providers this year. Southwest will be free to charge as many fees as they want, form airline partnerships and collude with other airlines on pricing, and even introduce assigned seating and cabin classes. I suspect they won't do most of those but all it takes is for revenues to take a huge tumble before they decide to take advantage of some fee revenue.
Yeah, I'm sorry but defending this is wrongheaded. What I saw there was pretty damn violent and the violence was completely escalated by the authorities on behalf of United Airlines. As a passenger, I would be horrified to be forced out of a seat I had paid for AND which they had already let me board. Then to be randomly chosen and handled in that matter is beyond the pale. I mean the dude was bleeding out of his mouth and pretty traumatized for goodness sake. United Airlines -- Fly the friendly skies amririte?
You can argue about what the right outcome should be, but I've got to go with the consensus here that he'll probably end up with a pretty good settlement.
When United revoked his ticket (which they are legally allowed to do, for any reason, at any time), and he refused to leave, he became a trespasser. Trespassing on a plane is serious damned business. He chose to resist removal, and because of that he was injured in the process. United screwed up by overbooking (especially letting people onto the plane before sorting that out), but the passenger royally screwed up by not complying with the law. He will sue United and/or Chicago PD in civil court and probably get a nice settlement.
You understand he wasn't removed because of an overbooked flight, he was removed for a United employee who was on stand-by. Tantrum or not, United handled this horribly.
This is not your typical overbooking issue trying to accommodate other ticketed passengers. This was a company trying to get their own employees, on stand-by, on a flight and forcibly removing a ticketed passenger to do so.
UA is a real pos and I miss continental. If he was a gold member like me I doubt he gets booted. On the other hand he is a pathetic man baby pulling a toddler defense hoping to cash in on sweet internet victim worship.
Legally, this seems correct. But as a business practice, United will suffer for this. What'll likely happen is United will pay out a hefty settlement. United will still continue to overbook flights and bump paying passengers for employees, but their policy will change to sort that out prior to boarding. People will moan and claim they'll never fly United, but that's an empty threat as people will book whatever flight is cheapest and convenient for them and hope to not draw the short straw in their lifetime. Everyone will forget this by next week.
I get where you are coming from, but they still could have easily asked another person after he refused.
This happens all the time. The airlines shuttle their people around so they can work other scheduled flights as needed. It's a very typical overbooking scenario, in fact.
Well it's gonna work and I would imagine this gets settled since this was a very public incident on top of being booted for UA employees.
You may know more about airline policies than me, in fact I'd bet on it. However, this does not look good for UA from a PR perspective any way you cut it. UA decided to drop the hammer and it get caught on tape in a very public, bloody way.
Fly a ton and have never once heard an airline asking volunteers for their own employees, let alone announce on the PA that the flight wasn't going to leave otherwise.
That's because 1) normally somebody volunteers and 2) they never bother to tell you why they need a volunteer.
It's bad optics for sure. We need a passenger's bill of rights so that situations like this are avoided.
1) And well now we know what happens when someone doesn't and 2) Actually a lot of times they tell you it's due to overbooking or for another passenger which I guess could include their own employees.
