It’s been widely reported that United’s Glasgow – Newark flight had to be cancelled on Saturday morning when two pilots showed up to work intoxicated.
Perhaps this has been so newsworthy because it’s not the first time this has happened, not the first time this has happened to United, and not the first time this has happened to United on this route. Three years ago, also in August, two United pilots showed up to work a Glasgow – Newark flight and were pulled from the cockpit, too.
What hasn’t been reported is what United did to get the aircraft home to the U.S., since those pilots couldn’t fly.
- All the passengers on the flight had to be rebooked onto other flights, since Saturday’s Glasgow – Newark flight was cancelled.
- United sent two pilots to Glasgow on that evening’s Newark – Glasgow flight UA162
- However the pilots have to fly business class, and business was sold out. So…
United Airlines Boeing 757
Since two United pilots showed up to work intoxicated, United had to inconvenience business class passengers on a totally different flight, too.
According to a passenger flying on United 162,
- United offered a $5000 travel voucher to anyone that would accept a downgrade to coach.
- No one accepted.
- Then “2 minutes later a name was called” and “an extremely heated discussion took place as a paying passenger [was involuntarily] bumped from first into a middle economy seat.”
After the David Dao passenger dragging incident on United airlines changed their involuntary denied boarding procedures.
United’s official policy is to provide up to $10,000 in denied boarding compensating to seek volunteers so they don’t have to remove passengers involuntarily. That actually happened to one passenger last year. (And the travel voucher is tax free.)
This is how badly United didn’t want to give me cash: pic.twitter.com/sI7vmbeB2Q
— Allison Preiss (@allisonmpreiss) March 22, 2018
They’ll pay a coach passenger $10,000 to voluntarily give up their seat. However this was an involuntary downgrade, the business class passenger would still be able to fly. The $10,000 policy doesn’t apply, and the gate agent reportedly didn’t bid up the price in search of a volunteer.
United’s efforts to inconvenience passengers weren’t limited to two intoxicated pilots, they continued to inconvenience passengers through the decisions they made recovering from the incident as well. And ironically it was the need to transport crew that led to the David Dao passenger dragging incident in the first place.
Is the unfortunate passenger downgraded to Y not entitled to file with EU regulation #261 for 75% reimbursement of his ticket price from B to Y?
Frankly, that happened to me in June on the Soviet version of Spain’s national carrier, Iberia; I was instructed to file with EU261.
Wow. Of course, things might have gone better if they had upped the offer or foreseen the problem and done something beforehand rather than trying a last minute recovery. In either case, the passengers should not be the ones being put out because of the actions of United crew.
United Airlines has become a Terrorist Organization
İs everyone so affluent that they don’t think a $5000-0 travel voucher is worth giving up their seat? Yeah, İ know it’s only a voucher, but still, it is equal to a R/T J class ticket somewhere! And this wasn’t a super long haul, it was only EWR to Glasgow, so what is that, under 7 hours? Wouldn’t it be kinda nice to later offer to your partner/elderly parents/child away in college a flight in Biz Class for a holiday get-together or reunion of something? Geez!
Ok your the expert. How does United handle this in your view? What the proper solutions?
$5,000 sounds fair for a 6 hour flight to Scotland on a shitty 757
The pilots should first off have to be sober to be on the plane and once sober have to wait for available seating that fits there criteria. They should have lowest priority meaning if there are no seats to bad thay should have to wait as long as it takes, hours, days whatever it takes or by there own ticket back.
I think having to cancel the Glasgow-Newark flight due to two drunk pilots is horrific.
I think having to fly coach from Newark in exchange for $5000 is the classic definition of a lame “first world problem.” Stuff happens. It’s not the end of the world if you arrive in the UK at exactly the same time with a $5000 voucher for having to “endure” 7 hours in coach with the hoi polloi. Imagine if UA had to get a passenger’s consent for the downgrade and, if no premium cabin pax consented, UA had to further delay the transport of the planeload of stranded pax!
Aw… One first class passenger is so much more important than everyone else….
@chopsticks Exactly… Thank you
To be honest, what I also hate is that they ALWAYS put their employees in business class seats when they do not work and fly on their own time. I NEVER ever got upgraded because of this. It is really a SCAM the frequent flyer program !!
While I’d take $5000 in a heartbeat, a $5000 voucher for United flights… Ehhh… I’d probably need the Dao treatment to get me to take that deal.
And why can’t the united pilots fly economy ?????
I’m not sure EU 261 applies to non-EEC carriers flying to Europe. From Europe, definitely.
If that voucher works on UA codeshares (LH, LX, etc.), it might be worthwhile.
5000 might only be twice the ticket cost (i.e., the cost of a round-trip ticket). So, why would someone that cost-insensitive take the voucher and a downgrade to the worst seat on the plane? Also, with a high-profile screwup like this one, the extra $50k to position crew via private jet is well worth the expense.
United offered a $5000 travel voucher to anyone that would accept a downgrade to coach.
It’s never clear to me in these discussions whether the compensation is in addition to to having the ticket refunded or not.
In this case, a one-way business class ticket EWR to Glasgow is running about $6,500 in September. If the total compensation is $5,000 and they don’t refund the original ticket (or refund all of it except some “fair” estimate of the coach class ticket cost) then the passenger is actually coming out behind.
No objection to having the replacement pilots fly in business (if you’re going to have them fly back from GLA after sitting up in coach all night you might was well ask the original drunk pilots to fly) but when someone is downgraded a class of service they should be made whole plus compensation not instead of compensation.
Why couldn’t United rent a business jet to transport the pilots rather than inconvincing a passenger
OK I’ll bite as to why no one in first took the offer. Perhaps they were all on corporate dime. Depending on corporate policy you might have to hand over said voucher while sitting in that dreaded middle seat. You would get nothing for volunteering in that scenario.
Or they could have offered someone $5K, put them on the BA shuttle to London and then let them fly business from London … I don’t think LHR was on strike yesterday were they?
I suspect the folks in Business of that flight were all pretty savvy. They probably asked what kind of seat they would be downgraded into and when they learned it was middle in coach it was a hard “NO.” I would have taken a $5000 voucher on that flight for a downgrade to an aisle seat in coach — a middle — no way, they can keep their funny money.
I’m a little curious why they did not offer the voucher plus rebooking onto another flight in business class, and a hotel if need be. Though 5K is a lot of money, UA has been charging more than that for many of its desirable TATLs a lot of the time, so for many that would just seem like only a skimpy partial refund, leaving them on a net basis with only an expensive economy ticket.
Talk about hell… downgraded from business class to a MIDDLE SEAT in economy, and without other compensation?
United needs to learn that smart travelers don’t want travel vouchers. They want cash.
Moving to a middle seat in economy on a long flight is my definition of hell. If United is going to engage in serial bumping, then they need to keep bumping within economy to give the involuntarily downgraded business class passenger an aisle or window seat.
I sure hope the fare differential was refunded. I fear that the people they bumped may have been traveling on award fares, because that’s become the normal process.
I used to do consulting work for ENAC in Italy which is the Italian Civil Aviation Authority. They are responsible for handling disputes regarding EU261. I did a lot of work with them on helping resolve these issues. The official guidelines almost always come out in the passenger’s favor on long-haul flights. The official guidelines state that you must take the highest one-way, fully refundable business class fare and the passenger must be paid in cash or bank transfer 75% of that fare.
JFFGBOWW J‡O 6402.00 (in USD) is the highest one-way fare (in fact, the ONLY one way fare in Business Class, which amounts to a payout of USD $4801.50.. I know I would certainly want the cash instead of a $5000 UA voucher.