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.
Gosh, the police and airlines will just beat you if you question them as they rob you,. taking thousands of dollars from you then denying you the service you paid for. It’s just like weather or something. They aren’t people who are legally and morally responsible for what they do. Thanks for clearing up how its my fault when your bosses beat their paying customers with truncheons.
Racism a contributing factor? You don’t have to be black, you only need be non white. Sadly it happens every day.
He is a doctor. His job is by definition more important than that of airline employees United wanted to put in his seat. Every time.
Gary, you are a complete idiot. I’ve lost total respect for you as a human being. United chooses to save money instead of raising volunteer denied boarding compensation then calls security. You come to United’s defense about flight delays? Well start the volunteer freaking compensation at $1000 and go up in $1000 increments until there is a taker. What the hell don’t you understand?
You are a complete piece of work!
“needed to” is not appropriate here.
You don’t pass the smell test, Gary Leff.
There is a stunning lack of empathy here. To sit here in judgement of this fellow—and then invoke the spectre of state sponsored torture— reflects a callousness such that I am no longer reading this blog.
Gary,
You are spot on! Its about time someone reported the truth about this situation. If you don’t listen to the crew and then the police, there is the potential for thing not going well for you. The passenger had a lot of options had he just complied and dealt with the situation like an adult off the plane. Instead he defied everyone, including the police and unfortunately things went south from there. This was not so much an oversell situation as it is was a scheduling issue.
My understanding is that the next flight out wasn’t until 3 in the afternoon the next day. So not exactly a timely solution for most people. Once all the passengers were settled in their seats on the plane United needed to come up with an alternative solution for their particular problem and not make it become one for a paying passenger. Monstrous. I was almost bumped off a plane in FL once because they brought a smaller plane. I was furious. They sold me a seat – I was there on time ready to go – they damn well better honor that contract.
Rubbish. This is such a piece of shit article. It’s completely avoidable.
The airline stop at $800 because they don’t give a sh*t about people, and the government only makes them pay 4 times the ticket for those it forcefully throws off the flight.
It shows the ugly face of deregulation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and regulate the airlines again. Americans don’t deserve this sh*t show because a large corporation wants to add a few pennies to the billions they make and the CEO wants a few pennies to the millions it gets as a bonus.
Airlines are acting like feudal lord that can punish their subjects (the little people of America, better if non-whites) at their whim — America used to be great, look at what happens now. Congress needs to put put a stop to this.
This guy was a HERO for not subserviently taking it in and putting the welfare of patients ahead of the CEO’s bonus. The airline was crass for calling the police, and the police was even more so for using taxpayer dollars for enforcing a totally misguided airline policy. I am so sick that my own money paid the salaries of the guys who stand around awaiting orders from United on who to go to beat up, sorry, remove from aircraft. Think of this when you file your taxes on April 18. Your own money got you this.
And as for you, Gary, you’re just a low-form paid vassal. Shame on you for condoning this corporate activity. Your moral compass needs to extreme recalibration.
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This is such a sickening piece of #fakenews.
Airlines don’t even report denied boarding. They only have to report “involuntary” denied boarding, and they make it into an art form left behind to sign a form when they get their vouchers, forms where the unaware infrequent passenger states that they voluntarily accepted the bump.
In other words, they’re fudging the statistics. The amount of “voluntary” denied boarding, which is unreported, would totally shock. But Washington doesn’t care about us.
Ick. Total airline-a** kissing propaganda. You are gross and completely in-credible, in the truest sense of the word.
Go to hell.
Here’s the thing: We didn’t see what happened just before the man was dragged down the aisle. And yes, the airline has the right to bump him. Regardless – even if he said no (which he did), that in no way justifies immediately using force in removing him off a plane. There are levels of escalation before you apply force – it’s what cops are trained to do.
Gary,
You have missed the mark with your analysis. United Airlines is not the victim. The victims are the passenger removed and all of the passengers, including children, who had to witness this violence.
United Airlines made mistakes. United oversold the flight to maximize their revenue. United made the choice to board the aircraft without tracking how many non-rev seats they needed. United decided to cap compensation for volunteers at $800. To avoid highers costs for their mistakes, they randomly selected passengers to remove and then called the police when one of the passengers refused to leave their seat.
This wasn’t about passenger safety. This was United trying to limit the cost of their mistakes.
The gate agent could have walked row to row offering higher compensation until a passenger volunteered to leave. United could have offered to bus the passengers to Louisville in four hourse. United could have bused or paid to put them on another flight.
The gate agent and flight crew could have worked to de-escalate the situation, but instead chose to escalate a customer service problem with violence.
The issue here isn’t whether United did want the law allows. There are many things that are immoral, unjust, and plain bad manners that are legal. Frankly, I would have expected you to be more concerned about United Airlines using the power of the state through the police to manage their customer service problems.
Instead of acting as a United Airlines apologist, how instead holding them accountable for delivering a better customer experience?
Stop supporting the airline industry when they are totally wrong.
Part 2: why fascism is a good idea
Your post makes a tremendous amount of sense and explains all of the stuff that people just won’t get no matter what you try to explain to them. To some people the airlines will always be the devil in this situation and they can’t see how if this man had made smarter decisions then he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
It takes two to tango and in this situation if either party had backed down the guy wouldn’t have gotten hurt. He could’ve made a better choice in the same way the airline could’ve made a better one.
How much were you paid to write this piece Gary. Beating up a doctor was maybe unavoidable are you shitting me.
The policeman assaulted the passenger as the policeman obviously felt empowered to do so. security and police do not have the right to detain or remove people unless they suspect that person of committing or intending to commit a criminal act or jeopardising the safety of the flight.
Removing passengers because the airline needs the seats for airline staff does not fit that criteria.
As previous comments have stated the airline should have kept on upping the ante until enough passengers accepted. If that meant $2000 per seat then so be it.
The airline in worse case scenario, should have a light plane on standby to accommodate staff.
The passenger should file assault charges against the policeman, and sue the airline.
The US is becoming more of a police state and less of a democracy everyday and corporate apologists like you are trying to justify it.
Gary you missed the mark. Makes me not want to read this blog anymore. Need to be compassionate, have you seen the videos? Geez
As concise as usual, I see.
I side with the United here. The airline personnel nicely asked the man to remove himself from the airline first. He declined. Then security is called in and he’s still refusing. This part isn’t shown. If a police officer asks you to do something you don’t say, “No.” The airline had a good reason for their actions and it was likely about hundreds of thousands of others whom they had a responsibility to get somewhere. This man happened to be chosen at random but it can happen to anyone. The airlines work very hard to accommodate people the best they can. No one is guaranteed transportation. Read about universal terms of agreement when you buy your ticket. I don’t blame the airlines or airline security. When they request your seat, “Give it up!”
UA could oversell the morning flight, there are a few flights on UA before 3pm.
UA can endorse the customer to AA. it has multiple flights.
If UA can accommodate with a better time, it can induce VDB, even at 400 USD.
The airlines have totally lost any sense of perspective or decency regarding customers. They do it because we allow them to. To excuse this horrible incident is hogwash. This doctor will likely sue and win and deserve it. But that will not not change the underlying situation. Airlines make money. Paying customers allow them to make money. We all have to demand decent treatment or nothing will change. We are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.
You actually brought up water torture as an expectation for a customer who did nothing wrong. Everything you stated is tainted by that absurd, repulsive remark. Have we fallen so far as a people that we now should expect to be treated with illegal torture when we don’t capitulate to a corporation’s unreasonable demands? So we better do as they say or else? I am so repulsed and will never read this sight again. I hope this article gets circulated among the writer’s peers and employers. Though I’m sure a fascist regime would accept your resume; your lack of empathy and decency is staggering.
Wow. The commenters on this post make me weep for the future of this country. They’re all a bunch of armchair quarterback social justice warrior snowflakes who cannot read your article using any logic or reason, because their bleeding hearts and emotions render them incapable. The article is well thought-out and information is concisely presented. The logistics of running an airline are ridiculously complicated. I don’t want to defend United (although their overselling strategy as you present it is sound), and I don’t want to defend the ONE officer who was a little too aggressive, but I definitely do not want to defend this so-called doctor for not cooperating and inflating this situation. The officers tell you to get off the plane, YOU GET OFF THE PLANE.
United Airlines oversold the flight to maximize their revenue. The passenger most likely had a non-refundable ticket. If they decided not to fly, they would have still paid.
United made the choice to board the aircraft without tracking how many non-rev seats they needed. United decided to cap compensation for volunteers at $800 to save money. They could have chosen to pay more, pay to place the passenger on an American flight, paid to bus their employees (who apparently were not scheduled to fly until Tuesday?) to Louisville, or gone row to row asking for volunteers to take the place of the passenger being refused.
United didn’t do any of these things. Instead, they called the police. This is just United Airlines doing what is best for United and customers be damned.
Lightheartedly joking about water boarding seems pretty out of place here. For that man to have reacted in such an exaggerated fashion to authority (the screaming, resisting, and later moaning “Just kill me” over and over) one has to wonder if torture wasn’t exactly what he was afraid of. Who knows what his background is? Also, so far I haven’t read any reason the flight crew couldn’t be bussed to Louisville or couldn’t have taken that Uber ride themselves. Are there regulations that prohibit this?
John,
You really think it is better to encourage an airline to abuse the police power of the state rather than managing customer service problems of their own making? You think it is better for the adults and children on that flight to witness a customer being taught a lesson by armed officers throwing the passenger to the floor as an example to the others not to step out of line and stand up for themselves? Not me.
United could have taken care of their customers the same way they expect their customers to take care of them, with money. Instead they used violence. Truly sad for all concerned.
Gary, thank you for the sane voice in response to the insane, angry mob. There are reasons why the captain controls the aircraft and the passenger was required by law to exit the aircraft. He should be prosecuted.
United’s official statement was that the flight was overbooked. This is what United said in their statement.
Gate agent and flight crew should have looked for alternatives for the flight crew – like get them on the next United flight (stated in the article) where people have not boarded or simply work with American to get them or passengers on that flight. I was placed on an American flight after my flight was canceled in Chicago – United paid American to take on that leg of the trip since the cost of hotel and means were more costly (I assume).
And blindly obeying authority is not the answer, the guy did nothing wrong and did not deserve to be beaten, arrested, or detained like the author suggested.
Maybe somebody should beat your ass to get you out off of a plane so, that you can see how it feels. Bet, you’d change your tune then. It was poor planning and irresponsible staff that caused the problem. I hope he bankrupts United .
The author of this article is a prize idiot.
Clearly United thought that getting their crew to Louisville on time was only worth $3200.00. This seems like a low value to put on the inconveniencing of the passengers flying out of Louisville on whatever flight the crew was heading for.
Let me fix some of this for you Gary. They didn’t need to board the gate crew because if they had then it would have been arranged beforehand, remove a paying passenger or beat him. United Airline’s own policy says that they shouldn’t ever remove a paid passenger for none essential crew. You’re no journalist. You’re a corporate shill. Go hang.
I find it shocking that you would try to compel people by invoking Guantanamo, which is meant for non-citizens only.
That said, rather than suggesting that the passenger do all these remedies, perhaps United should have used them. Doctors ALSO have time constraints for work. They ALSO need to be well rested in order to protect lives.
No matter how you slice it, this is United/Republic’s fault.
Let’s stop taking UA. It is terrible/brutal actions.
United you big piece of shit
So on the next flight that Gary takes will he quietly give up his seat to accomodate an airline staff? Come on Gary.
Sorry Gary, realised my earlier statement was wrong. You would never be put in this situation as you never fly cattle class. In addition to that, the airlines do know how to keep a blogger happy, im sure.
To go with your premise, its the Doctors fault, they could have told him if he stayed on the flight, he would be liable for the costs the United incurred for not being able to transit the crew to the needed destination. Then let him stay on the flight and force him to pay.
Instead, they assaulted the Doctor. Who was smart enough to provide passive-resistance which is allowed as your right in the United States. They can fuck off and die as an airline.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-science-terms-and-concepts-50
It’s really disturbing how much you blame the victimized, paying customer, who was assaulted by law enforcement personnel at the behest of the airline.
The willingness of some Americans to simply bend over and take it when law enforcement / flight crew / whatever authority figure demands it is appalling. No, there’s no ethical ‘requirement’ to obey flight crew commands in a situation as ridiculous as this. There is a requirement of the airline and of law enforcement to not use bodily harm to enforce a simple civil disagreement.
The airline is ultimately responsible, but our law enforcement organizations need to be far better at mediation, de-escalation and control of situations, rather than just being the junkyard dogs of corporations.
Disgusting.
Gary:
You’re so wroooong! No person should be treated this way in a commercial transaction. At least, that’s what it was until he was attacked by the vicious minions of the establishment. Now he’s a victim of the American Oligarchy. Also, I will never set foot on a United flight again in this life time.
They could have killed him by smashing his head against the arm rest. Unavoidable?????
They could have killed him.
We are entitled to everything. The world owes us everything. If we dont get what we want, when we want it, we better be compensated by $$$$$$$$$ because clearly, we deserve this.
Dear airlines, please don’t over book your flights so my airplane tickets are way more expensive. I would love it if I couldn’t afford to fly home during an emergency because some people can’t be reasonable during flight boarding.
Wow, Gary.
Getting beat up was “unavoidable”??? Put down the highball glass and quit blogging for the night.
You make lots of arguments about the economics and then overlook that the airline tried to have it both ways. Bid up to a set amount. When that fails, resort to brute force.
I’d love to see your reaction if a lawn guy tried to buy a ticket from United and then resorted to force if they didn’t accept a coupon toward $800 of lawn care (good only in the next 12 months.) If the airlines are going to overbook (or bump for operational reasons) they shouldn’t expect every transaction to be roses for them. If time is limited (like a crew showing up AFTER the flight has boarded full), start higher and offer something other than a voucher with tons of restrictions.
The fact that the guy was a doctor (kinda like the airline crew that *HAD* to be there the next day, huh?) has clouded the issue. What if he’d been going to a funeral? Or his daughter’s graduation? Or a travel writer going on a mileage run? What if he just wanted to get home by air travel on the ticket he’d purchased and boarded with?
The point is, what United was offering wasn’t seen by ANYONE on the flight as of greater value than taking the flight. So if you’re going to trot out all these economic argument, take a moment to think about the essential element in every voluntary economic transaction: both sides agree that what they are giving up is of equal or lesser value than what they are getting in return.
All the people who have weighed in on how great the offer was unfortunately were not on the flight, or this would never have been a story. But they weren’t. So United got an F economics 101 and instead got an A+ in coercion. And another A+ in cluelessness. Lots of that going around.
PS, Guantanamo? Seriously?
Jesus fuck their is zero civic responsibility in this guy huh? Shot in the dark? You did not serve in the military.
So you think getting UA four crews onboarded is the same as weather issues? When you suggest travelers plan ahead of time, why would not suggest UA plan their crews to be prepared ahead of time? Gary, it is like you have no brain.
This article is full of some of the most red herring, “look at the shiney object” nonsense. Let this gem:
“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).”
Trying to get the reader to question what it even means to overbook! What a profoundly idiotic trite way to lay down an arguement.
Let me be clear you shill – by “overbooking” we ALL MEAN THE SAME THING. We mean SELLING MORE SEATS THAN A PLAN PHYSICALLY HAS. We aren’t talking about the rare case we’re the plane has to adjust something for weight distribution reasons or some random hazard. We are ALL talking about REAL, INTENTIONAL OVERBOOKING. Intentional. Get it? Is this blog a joke?