I wrote earlier about a doctor who was dragged off a United Express flight last night when the airline needed to transport crew instead of four passengers. He needed to get to work at a hospital the next day. United, though, needed crew in place in Louisville.
In this case it doesn’t appear that United sold more tickets than seats, rather they discovered for operational reasons they couldn’t carry as many passengers as expected. They needed to position crew at the flight’s destination.
Credit: @Tyler_Bridges
What I wanted to explore here, though, is a comment from reader neversink,
You buy a ticket. You should be guaranteed a seat. Overbooking should be illegal. And if the airline wants people to leave, they should up the ante to the market rate until someone takes the offer. Whatever it takes. Even if it takes $20,000 to get someone off the plane. The airlines play this game at the passengers inconvenience. It’s time the airlines were inconvenienced.
Why Airlines Overbook
While there wasn’t an oversale in this situation, most airlines in North America will sell more seats than they can carry passengers. They use historical information to determine how many passengers are likely not to show up for a flight. They want each seat to go out with a passenger in it.
Maybe they figure passengers are likely to oversleep a Sunday morning flight out of Las Vegas, so they can transport home those passengers that do make it to the plane. Passengers that oversleep expect to stand by on a later flight (either free or for a fee). Either way, an empty airline seat is a spoiling resource.
Airlines are pretty good at guessing these things, taking data like when the flight is and how far in advance tickets were purchased. And indeed they’re getting better, the rate of denied boardings has been on the decline over the past two decades. (In 2000, 0.21% of passengers were denied boarding (voluntary and involuntary) by the largest US airlines. In 2015, 0.09% were.)
You might think airlines shouldn’t overbook, sell each seat one time. But if that were the case airlines wouldn’t really be able to allow passengers the freedom to switch flights at will either on refundable tickets or merely by paying a change fee. Show up 15 minutes late for the airport, buy a new ticket.
What Does it Even Mean Not to Overbook?
If an airline sells exactly the number of seats they have on a plane, they still may not be able to accommodate everyone. Sometimes weather requires the plane to take on more fuel, and so they have carry fewer passengers (weight and balance issues can even affect a widebody aircraft).
And the number of seats on a plane itself can seem somewhat arbitrary. American Airlines has more seats on a Boeing 777 than Cathay Pacific does, so American is more likely to be unable to carry as many passengers as the plane has seats on Los Angeles – Hong Kong than Cathay is.
Is American overbooking by selling each seat on their plane, knowing that sometimes heavy winds on the long flight could cause challenges?
If Airlines Couldn’t Overbook, Had to Sell Fewer Seats, Prices Would Be Higher
You may not like the idea of overbooking, but denied boardings are rare. And the flexibility to do it means that the airline has more seats to sell.
Ban overbooking and that’s fewer seats being sold. That means higher costs per passenger (since you’re spreading the costs over fewer ticket sales). And quite simply, holding demand for seats constant reducing the quantity of seats supplied raises their price.
But Shouldn’t Airlines Spend More Time Seeking Volunteers?
It often seems that airlines should work harder to find volunteers to take a bump in exchange for compensation, instead of involuntarily denying boarding to passengers who have to get where they’re going. Maybe the airline only offered $200 or $400 in vouchers, why not $600 or $800 in cash especially when they’ll be on the hook to pay out to passengers involuntarily bumped. Should the airline here have been forced to keep upping the ante to $2000 or $5000?
Except that the time spent doing this might cause even bigger problems. Or at least it’s reasonable for the airline to think ex ante that it might.
- Delaying a flight even a little could cause crew to time out and the whole flight to cancel
- Government may have given the plane a very specific takeoff time (air traffic control) and if they miss their window the flight could be substantially delayed or even cancelled
- A late flight might cause passengers to misconnect with their next flight and be stranded
- And late arriving crew would delay other flights
- Or crew might be required to sleep in the next day to meet legal minimum rest requirements
There are No Guarantees in Air Travel
JetBlue doesn’t overbook their flights but saw a big spike in involuntary denied boardings. It turns out they had to substitute small aircraft on a number of occasions, which had fewer seats than the original planes.
Weather cancels flights. Mechanical issues cancel flights. Airline IT meltdowns cancel flights.
A friend had her Delta flights cancelled three days in a row last week (on day two we got her a United flight using miles that Delta had said was unavailable, no time to argue over a rebooking).
Sometimes flights are delayed and you don’t make your connection, and sometimes those connections are the last flight of the day — or even the week.
Air travel is complicated, and subject to the whims of mother nature, the skills of the airline, and the vagaries of chance.
Unfortunately you have to roll with it, and if you really really need to be somewhere you need to build in a cushion (something my friend on Delta did, flying to Los Angeles a day and a half early, but with Delta’s operational problems this last week and their personnel and IT failures it simply still wouldn’t have been enough).
What Should the Doctor Have Done? And How Should United Have Reacted?
In this case the flight was delayed, and the situation went bad. It’s reasonable for an outside observer to think the police should have found a less confrontational way to work with the passengers who were ordered to get off the plane than to drag them off and bloody them!
In fact that’s my hunch, fully realizing that we only have seen video of what happened once the man was being dragged off and not what happened leading up to that.
However when an airline orders you off the plane, you need to follow instructions even if it sucks. You could face criminal charges for failing to do so. You could wind up in Guantanamo and frankly no one wants to be water boarded…
If the passenger had gotten off the plane, they still could have made it to the hospital the next day albeit more worse for wear. There was a later Chicago – Louisville flight on United — and also on American (if they’d hurried) — although it’s not clear United would have put them on it. It would have been a 4.5 hour drive but a rental car is possible. It would have been ~ $300 with UberX. These options are all bad but it’s better than being dragged off by cops and bloodied.
Sometimes there are no good options so you look for the least bad. That’s basically never confronting crew and then confronting police. Confrontations with police can end badly not in an airport. In an airport the stakes are even greater, and this situation could have become worse than it did.
While the police probably could and should have done better, in some sense the man got lucky.
@Jason, how else do you remove someone who is resisting and not complying with orders? Yeah its a shitty situation that he got injured but the bottom line is that he would be fine if he would have listened to the lawful instructions of at least four people (United representative and 3 police officers).
‘Airline shoud have offered more”. That’s a slipery slope. If airlines were known to continually raise the price, the public would soon get wise snd just wait for ever-higher offers. So it would solve nothing.
Yes, it would totally suck to lose the random pick lotto and be booted, but for that asswipe, er, Doctor to act like a child with his refusal to leave and screaming tantrum, nobody should have sympathy. Put me on that jury and he’d walk with 4x his ticket price for is troubles.. But being as this is a media storm, with everyone piling on in faux outrage over ‘what should have been done”, this twit will walk with 7 figure payday and his lawyer will be picking out his yacht already.
@Tom, thanks for having my back. It blows my mind that people don’t take responsibility for their own actions (or inaction in this case). If they waited for him to voluntarily get off the plane, that crew could have timed out leading to further delays or cancellations, and a snowball effect down the line. You think that when police show up, people will listen.
@Quinn, yes I agree completely with everything you’re saying, I don’t understand how people are taking his crazy man’s side after he acted like such a child and inconvenienced so many other people. It’s also somewhat disturbing to see people’s reactions considering this was an Asian doctor vs. a Muslim man speaking Arabic… remember the guy last year that was removed from a plane simply because a passenger witnessed him doing math equations that she thought looked like Arabic symbols? The double standard is extremely distubing… people are so quick to judge when it’s a Muslim or a black man, but when it’s a white girl wearing spandex or an Asian doctor, they are quick to jump to their defense, even though they were technically the ones not following the rules/policies, and the Muslims were not breaking any laws/rules. Obviously this is beyond the scope of this issue, but it’s disturbing to see these reactions nonetheless…
We have really crossed into the twilight zone when we begin to agree with the premise that someone being a pain in the arse is cause for them to be brutalized by government agents whose salaries we pay.
@Tom — which part of my comment was a personal attack? Telling someone to remove a stick from their ass? That’s actually sound medical advice. Sticks up asses are health hazards. More on the topic, you seem overly concerned with delaying nameless thousands of travelers. Why do you care about these faceless people more than the doctor whom you see on video. Are you aware that a large proportion of the travelers you worry so much about delaying are not MDs (medical doctors, who actually help people) but in fact MDs (managing directors, a pompous corporate title) at companies that produce dreadful goods and services, flying around the country on barbie jets just to deliver hacked up PowerPoints to other grunts and empty suits whose lives consist primarily of Excel macros and cheating on their wives.
@Quinn — well I’m not a cop, but maybe you could ask those cops who have removed passengers who resisted orders, without causing the same scene as what we are discussing now.
@Jason those other cops who removed people did so without incident because said pax LISTENED to them. This guy would not voluntarily get off the plane. You still haven’t answered how else they should have removed him since he wouldn’t get off voluntarily. Still don’t understand your rant on Tom and still don’t understand why you think I have a stick in my ass.
I’m also confused by his min-rant about MD’s vs. actual medical doctors, and how this is at all relevant to the situation…
Although I must admit, the PowerPoint and Excel references were quite entertaining.
I have to disagree. All of the alternatives available to the passenger were also available to UA to get the remaining single member of its crew to Louisville, and UA is better positioned to know and use those alternatives than Joe Passenger.
Also, there is no reason why our tax dollars, paying for the police, should be used to subsidize UA’s staff’s poor decisions – their failure to negotiate a fair price with passengers or use those other alternatives. This is of a piece with states using the National Guard to break industrial strikes, instead of forcing management to negotiate.
@Quinn — Cops board planes only to remove people involuntarily. Now if you say that sometimes people refuse FA orders but comply with cop orders, that is true. However you will find videos of cops dragging pax up the aisle, off the plane — that clearly indicates refusal to comply even with the cop.
How come those situations leave those pax uninjured, while the current situation left the pax beaten and bloodied?
@Tom — the point of the mini-rant, in more charitable terms, is that a lot of travel is not important, or at least not timely.
A doctor going to care for his patients is both important and timely.
“‘Airline shoud have offered more”. That’s a slipery slope. If airlines were known to continually raise the price, the public would soon get wise snd just wait for ever-higher offers. So it would solve nothing.”
It’s an auction. It solves everything. The kind of collusion to fix prices you are suggesting, among 150+ pax on a 737, is unlikely, as some people will be willing to take the airline’s deal (ie. defect from the cartel) at a lower price than others.
@Jason So based on your Monday morning quarterbacking after having viewed the two videos in question, do you have any insight into what the cops actually did WRONG. I agree it resulted in a less than ideal outcome, but I didn’t notice any flagrant abuse or brutality… do you have any suggestions as to what the cops SHOULD have done, instead of what they shouldn’t have done? Also, have you seen any additional footage that we’re not aware of? Your comments seem to suggest that you must have some sort of additional information, otherwise I’m not sure how you are making these conclusions. I’m not defending the police, nor am I condemning them, I don’t think we have enough information to judge how the police handled the situation. Regardless though, United has no control over what the police do after they have been called, so all of the boycott United stuff is nonsense.
@Tom You seem to get “disturbed” easily. 🙂 Identifying someone as an Asian doctor is no different when media refers to someone as an 87 year old grandmother, or a musician from Israel, an off-dity police officer, a tourist from France, etc. It humanizes the person and the story. That’s who they are.
I also think you are letting UA off too lightly. What kind of emergency caused this crew not to be at their destination in time, without having to cause such a commotion?
@Jason In theory a doctor caring for patients seems like a legitimate reason to take a flight, who’s to say that his reason for flying is any more legitimate than mine? Everyone has their own personal reasons for taking the flight, everyone thinks they are important and can justify their reasons (have you ever witnessed jury selection for a trial? hahaha) But who is to judge this, especially when the airline has no way to verify any of this information…. this would be a shitshow if they went around from passenger from passenger, it would take forever… in a perfect world your theory might work, but unfortunately this is far from a perfect world….
To the fat rednecks defending police brutalizing a doctor for not giving up his paid seat: you’re the same authoritarian bootlickers who would serve as the Russians’ jackboots to keep Trump in power after after he and his wretched party are soon flushed like the smelly sewage you are.
Gary under what law did UA ask the Doctor to deboard? He was not sick or a danger to others. Involuntary Denied Boarding regulations cover “Denied Boarding” . Once you let someone board you have no more right to ask them to deboard than does a hijacker does to ask the pilot to go to a different airport. Both are “Interfering with the scheduled operation of a commercial airliner”. The Gate staff, Flight attendents and the cops are technically all chargeable with a felony offense. Not that it ever would. Gary your advice seems to be if someone is breaking the law let them and sue them later on just because the criminal has a badge?
comment on the mini rant – yep there is a difference between an MD caring for patients and someone with a PhD (still called Dr.). Who knows what kind of MD, this guy was. Maybe he had several cardiology pts that he needed to see to get discharged – who knows. Yeah, he could have responded better, but we have no idea what he had going on regarding patients or his practice. United could have cut some slack for that. I’m sure had there been a medical emergency in the air he could have helped with, United would have gladly used his assistance. Allowing people to board knowing they needed seats is just bad customer service and bad karma – good going United.
So United felt it was better to seat their own dead-legging employees rather than a customer they had contracted to carry. Why couldn’t their staff fly with someone else or with Uber. If that is the reason then United are in for a whole heap of negative press and deserve all if it.
Presumably the passenger had been given a boarding card? So how was he then select for unboarding?
This is f&$@ed up. He wasn’t “involuntarily denied boarding” he was sitting on the plane and had already boarded!!! Then he was assaulted by three armed men for not agreeing to an unreasonable demand to move from his seat.
The airline should have never allowed more passengers to board than it could fly. It wasn’t like a safety issue or some weight issue where they could not carry enough fuel-it was a calculated business decision that it was more beneficial to remove this passenger to reposition some of their staff. All of the transportation options that were available to that doctor were also available to everyone of those employees to get to Lexington.
It is appalling that the airline can call the police to act as muscle to enforce their ridiculous policies and outrageous that the police would escalate this into a violent situation.
Every other passenger on that flight declined the option of getting to Lexington in some other way with $800 compensation so do not try to make it seem like HE was being unreasonable- 100+ passengers felt the same way he did.
It is understandable that airline flights need to be oversold, however more should be done to inform passengers when they are likely to be bumped based on their fare class when they purchase the ticket and more should be done to compensate passengers. At some point, one of the passengers would have been willing to give up their seat voluntarily for a compensation amount that they agreed to. $800 happened to be too low for the 100 people on the flight. Maybe someone would have moved for $1000 or $1500 and no one would have had to be beaten up over it. At some point of compensation, someone would have agreed. Therefore, if involuntary boarding wasn’t allowed and compensation was not capped, we would have a much better system for all involved.
I can’t help but ask this: Why are the police the ones removing him? That bothers me on a number of levels:
A) There was no public safety issue at play here. (as far as we know the man wasn’t violent)
B) Why should taxpayer resources (police officers paid by our tax dollars) be used to help United solve its staffing issue?
C) Why should further taxpayer resources be put at risk in the form of legal costs/settlement when that doctor inevitable sues the police department / municipality?
If United has a staffing issue (not having the crew where they need to be in time to get the rest they need for their next flight), it shouldn’t be the customer’s problem. When I screw up in business, that’s on me — not my customers. But more important than that, we shouldn’t be letting a private for-profit company put our tax dollars to use on a completely non-public-safety issue. Those officers should have been somewhere else actively keeping people safe. Our tax dollars shouldn’t be used because United doesn’t want to hire their own bouncers.
I know the response here is something to the effect of the fact that the man was trespassing since the plane was private property and he was asked to leave (or otherwise criminal because he wasn’t obeying crew instructions, etc). That still seems very weak to me when he has paid for the seat and there is no safety issue at play — and as a taxpayer, it bothers me no less that my tax money could end up in this doctor’s pocket in large quantity because United couldn’t find a way with their billions of dollars to solve the problem. (For the record, I am not a local taxpayer in this particular scenario — I mean that in the broader sense here).
If United wants to forcibly remove someone from a flight because they need to move their crew, let them do it themselves. If the customer requests the police to be present so he/she can report an assault when United’s employees rip that customer out of a seat, that’s a different story. United should be the one taking on the risk for that, not the police.
United needs to hire their own “bouncers”… wow, that’s a new one. I prefer the previous comments proposed solution of raising the minimum and maximum amounts of compensation that must be paid to customers that are involuntarily bounced, at least this can be done by congress without the airline’s input and would in theory help to make the solution more market-based. This would probably be better, safer, and more cost effective than hiring dedicated “bouncers”… Although perhaps United might benefit from hiring bouncers at least for the purpose of enforcing proper dress code… two birds, one stone…(sarcasm)
I am sorry, but if I was in the doctor’s shoes I probably would have done the same thing. United caused this fiasco in the first place. If there was a later flight, why did they send the crew members on that flight? Why was there not proper planning to let the gate agents know ahead of time that they need four seats for the crew?
And why is everyone saying he was denied boarding? He was allowed to board. They should have taken care of the lack of seats before everyone boarded the aircraft and not afterwards.
Just because they could does not mean they can. I hope he gets a huge payday.
Increased VDB comp might have solved this problem. But once the decision to go IDB and a unlucky person was announced, the die was cast. Giving in to him, would have only emboldened the next choice to do the same. So they have to call the police.
And in case no one noticed. This was CHICAGO.
Gary Leff has honestly gone off balance in this case taking the side of United. All I can say he is full of himself. Thank You for showing you’re in this for the money. Empathy is not your cup of tea. Shameful post.
Nope, ridiculous. Should have upped the price until people offered to give up their spots. I hope this guy walks away with a fat settlement. I’ll certainly never be flying United again.
You do realize that giving this guy a huge payday will set quite the precedent, now that passengers know what they can get away with and still get millions of dollars… if airlines have to set aside millions of more dollars for insurance and legal fees, ticket prices will go up for everyone…
@Tom — you ask do I have any suggestions for the police, well not formally, because I have zero law enforcement expertise. Casually: the situation at hand was one calm and unarmed guy who needs to leave, but is adamant about not leaving. Okay — this cannot be the first time something like this has ever happened. Get multiple officers and handle the passenger like a recalcitrant overgrown baby. Be the physical version of “polite but firm.” Heck, wasn’t there a picture a few years back of a drunk passenger wrapped up in duct tape? Maybe do that, THEN drag the passenger out of the aircraft, making sure not to bump up or scrape against anything in the process.
@Tom and others re: relative importance of passengers and their purposes of travel — you’re right on everyone having our own reasons to travel, and “who is to judge,” but if we, the flying public, came to an agreement that booting people at random is unacceptable, then surely we could conceive of some value system to rank passengers. Could it be perfect, not even close. Could it be better than random, yes.
I guess IDB (Involuntarily Denied Boarding) should be renamed to DOA (Dragged off Airplane). I’m with some of the others – why did they let people on in the first place if they needed the seats? Regardless of the reasons and the doctor’s behavior, very bad form on United’s part.
Bad form on United’s part, unacceptable and childish behavior on the passenger’s part, and likely a bit of unnecessary force on the part of the police. There is plenty of blame to go around, but placing it all on one party is very naive… a lot of things went wrong here, and there is plenty of blame to be shared.
You’ve lost me as a reader Gary. Not only are you way out of your element but your comments are as bad as how UA handled this.
It was unavoidable that the airport cops beat the man? Did you seriously just make that statement? Yep you did. Use of force must be proportional and there was no reason at all for the injuries the man received. I wouldn’t describe as lucky, someone who was beaten up by airport thugs over UA’s ineptitude.
@Eric I think the cops likely acted VERY badly. But once hte cops are involved and you challenge their authoritah, things could have gone even worse (hence my reference to Guantanamo).
I think my phrase ‘lucky’ is being misinterpreted here, likely my fault, I’m suggesting even worse things could have happened. Like being held as a terrorist.
any flights on Unites or other airlines have vacant seats to the same destination that day?
seems like someone did not take due diligence to resolve the problem
I remember a time when it was common practice for an airline to over 1)a continental rounding trip voucher and 2) first class on the next outbound flight. Now, United, being a bunch of tightwads bought them selves a lawsuit in which the court of public opinion has already found them guilty. So, instead of maybe $500-$1000 worth of good, they are going to shell out $25K -$100K for “”reasons.”
It’s complete shame on UA. Making customers suffer because of them mismanaging the situation.
Inspiring people to be afraid of the system and be thankful that the system didn’t torture people even more – what can be worse for a journalist of a free (or so-called) country.
There will be no change in customer centricity as long we’ll advocate carriers’ evils and invent excuses on their behalf to make us look like wise fellows.
I hope that some of UAL shareholders will challenge the management on the situation to make them sweat about sweet corporate careers and relate to what that poor MD used to feel.
@asdf – Absolutely right, it would just be a Dutch auction in reverse – the most equitable way to solve this.
You lost all credibility at this line: “You could wind up in Guantanamo and frankly no one wants to be water boarded…”
Seriously man?? That’s where you want to go with this? That someone would have earned a slot in Tortureville for this? Despicable.
Biased and unintelligible article. Gary, you are better off writing about redeeming miles and free hotel stays. Beating up a doctor was “unavoidable”!!!!! What a moron!
@R Rig – the scary reality is aviation and conflict with law enforcement places people at grave risk
Congrats: This column made travel professionals look even worse. I’m sorry, but there is no reasonable explanation for this astonishingly inhuman behavior OR the excuse-making of this author. All of you need a dose of reality… And a “re-accommodation” of your own.
Gary, you should rethink your article. The points you mentioned are sadly misleading or incorrect. A few salient points, as mentioned by many:
1. It wasn’t any safety issue causing the need to remove passenger, but United’s own operational need. If United needed those employees somewhere else, they should have accounted for it, and figure out ways to transport them (take a cab, buy last minute tickets at another airlines, etc)
2. The passenger already boarded. Anything at this point should be voluntary, and it’s up to United to provide the right incentives. It’s in their interest too, because after 3h if the plane can’t take off United is a much worse financial situation
3. Yes, auction is the right way to fix it. The price would naturally be what individuals are willing to be compensated to leave the plane and take the next one. I’m pretty sure that it would have costed United way less than cancelling a full flight or dealing with this PR nightmare.
0.09% of the 632 million people who fly annually is still nearly 600,000 people bumped annually. I don’t care how small the percentage is, that’s still a substantial problem. And I don’t buy the argument that the airline has the infinite right to refuse someone a seat. Contracts generally specify the right to prevent boarding. They let him board, after which he is entitled to the flight unless he is disruptive, which he wasn’t until they tried to unilaterally violate their agreement with him.
“What Should the Doctor Have Done?”
That’s your question?! That’s victim blaming.
What about the police?! They are not forces of nature. They work for us. No public interest is served their behavior here.
Those of us who live outside suburban Fox News bubbles know: Don’t talk to the police. Don’t call the police.
This post is shameful, Gary.
So based on your article, I exptrapolate that you are placing the blame on the passenever for not cooperating? You are blaming a passenger, for paying for a seat, then sitting in that seat, and then refusing to give up that seat? So what rights do passengers have? Pay us and maybe we’ll get you there?
@Who Cares III passengers have very few rights under the law
No conceivable, non-safety-related, “operational need” of United Airlines justifies the treatment of this passenger. United made the mistake by boarding too many people when they shouldn’t have, therefore they need to eat the consequences of delaying their own dead-heading crewmembers. It’s just the cost of doing business (poorly).
Nonsense. There is an enormous difference between not letting someone who showed up late board a flight, and kicking off passengers who are not only already on a plane, but were on the plane on time. Everyone gets that airlines can’t control the weather, but we also get that they CAN control their poor decisions. If there was another flight leaving soon that had empty seats, why weren’t the United crew asked to get on that one?
You flirt with blaming a passenger for beating beaten up and justify it with all kinds of irrelevant information and things that passengers didn’t even have about later flights. But it all gets down to the airline’s “need” to do business, as if ONLY an airline ever had to do business ever. I mean, yay for your friend who could afford to fly somewhere 2 days early, but in the real world, this is not how either life or business work. I do not have 4 days available so I can pad every flight on both ends. Nor would my employer pay for me to arrive somewhere 2 days early.
If the airline really needs to do business, they’d accept that the cost of their “need” is that they must offer more money to induce people to get off the plane. This is the morally right decision and also the way to do customer service. United is a failure on all levels.
Your desires to comply with abuse are why you’re abused without concerns.
Treating people like animals is how savages are made.
Putting economic reality and fear mongering above humanity….just pathetic.