Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

This e-mail illustrates the complete imbalance of the &quot;contract&quot; of carriage between passenger and airline, which is compounded by the Federal Aviation Regulations that give the crew ultimate power even when there&#x27;s no safety risk[0].<p>The CEO states that the flight was &#x27;fully boarded&#x27; and then later that it was decided to &#x27;deny boarding&#x27; to four passengers.<p>So was it fully boarded or not? It doesn&#x27;t really matter, the airline can change its language as it sees fit, to achieve its desired business objective and the customer has no recourse.<p>I&#x27;m an aviation enthusiast but I don&#x27;t fly commercial airlines any more for this reason amongst others.<p>[0] Because when there&#x27;s no safety risk they can just escalate until the customer becomes aggravated, and then there&#x27;s a safety risk.

If they had just increased the compensation passengers would have voluntarily given up their seat, everyone has their price. It didn&#x27;t even need to be money, free flights, upgrades, it costs them next to nothing, especially when you consider this is still running in the media days later. Everyone hates to hear they overbook flights so you&#x27;d think when they get bitten United would take some of the savings made overbooking and spend it when it doesn&#x27;t work out. At the end of the day I have a sneaking suspicion they&#x27;ll still be ahead.

Doesn&#x27;t anyone with an ounce of PR sense work at this company? No one is impressed by the legal technicalities. No one cares that the internal policies were followed.<p>If they want to get out ahead of this they need to understand and come to grips with the fact that they are well nigh universally perceived to have been in the wrong.

This is what happens when you normalize violence, you focus on the blaming and legal stuff instead and you get people like this CEO but no one is reacting to the fact that a human being has been knocked out, dragged out like an animal for something he didn&#x27;t have to give up. He had a legitimate reason not to give up his seat, he had patients he needed to see the next day. The airline CANNOT act like the computer is right all the time (they said for randomizing the seats to give up) and they should&#x27;ve been humans to understand and pick someone else or increase their incentives.<p>Remember, the flight was NOT overbooked. They said they needed to get their four employees to a different state, so they wanted four people off the plane. This is all spinning by the airline, listen to the specifics.<p>I don&#x27;t care whose fault it was, there was absolutely no need for that violence in the first place, the escalation was not justified in any situations. The protocol needs to be changed, that&#x27;s what people need to start asking for. Change the policy to include exemptions such as doctors or others (firefighters, cops, etc), increase the incentives and so on.<p>The airline should&#x27;ve done its job correctly by informing their customers BEFORE boarding the plane and upping the incentives until it gets their goal. The customers should not be forced to give up what they paid before because the airline screwed up.<p>I could care less that overbooking is a common thing. The society should not be about protecting the profits of the companies, they should be promoting the humanity and moving it further. This is a huge regression by allowing the companies to have more power.

I&#x27;m sure they could have avoided this whole situation by offering the first 4 persons of the airplane, a 1000$ CASH. Instead, their policy is to risk incidents like this, for one simple reason: because they can.<p>This is what happens when you get monopolies. Come on people, I thought we learned from the ISP monopolies already. Whenever you have limited or No choice: like monopolies, no good can come from it. I&#x27;m not surprised by this at all. And, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if we see large increases in air fares above inflation, in coming years, as airlines consolidate their monopolistic powers. It won&#x27;t be too long untill they&#x27;re competing with Comcast and At&amp;t for worst customer service.

I love how they say he was advised that he was &quot;denied boarding.&quot; Here&#x27;s a tip: If I&#x27;m in a seat, you&#x27;ve already let me board. And if you planned poorly then that isn&#x27;t my problem.<p>Unlike any other industry of which I am aware, airlines are unbelievably skilled at making their problems their customers problems and then not apologizing for it.

The fact that the airline technically didn&#x27;t do anything illegal here really speaks to the lack of consumer protection laws in this country.

Ignoring the physical assault, this sounds about par for United customer support...<p>I&#x27;ve been avoiding United for years, but a few years ago, a few friends wanted to be picked up at the airport after United flights. Over 50% of them bought tickets for flights that didn&#x27;t exist, and were instead consolidated onto other, later, flights.<p>Airlines should have to pay large multiples of ticket prices (in cash) to passengers that encounter a schedule change or overbooking. As the overbookings increase, the refunds should grow exponentially. (2x if 0.1% are bumped, 4x if 0.2, then 8x, 16x, etc).<p>If they didn&#x27;t change their behavior, United would have to pay out its market cap in a matter of days, which is exactly what they deserve for systematically abusing customers for at least a decade.

Can someone explain how this was an &quot;oversales&quot; situation since the plane was actually fully booked and not over sold, and with that how United&#x27;s action didn&#x27;t violate the law.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;cfr&#x2F;text&#x2F;14&#x2F;part-250" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;cfr&#x2F;text&#x2F;14&#x2F;part-250</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gpo.gov&#x2F;fdsys&#x2F;search&#x2F;pagedetails.action?packageId=CFR-2001-title14-vol4&amp;granuleId=CFR-2001-title14-vol4-sec250-2a&amp;collectionCode=CFR&amp;browsePath=Title+14%2FChapter+II%2FSubchapter+A%2FPart+250%2FSection+250.2a&amp;collapse=true&amp;fromBrowse=true" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gpo.gov&#x2F;fdsys&#x2F;search&#x2F;pagedetails.action?packageI...</a>

Relevant info: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.transportation.gov&#x2F;airconsumer&#x2F;fly-rights" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.transportation.gov&#x2F;airconsumer&#x2F;fly-rights</a><p>Short version: if bumped, you&#x27;re legally entitled to a cash payout equal to 2x fare cost.

I seriously can&#x27;t understand what kind of mental gymnastics this airline management is doing in order to justify in their heads that this is just fine.<p>Even if the law is on their side, they still overbooked the plane by themselves, they still let everyone check in, they still let everyone in onboard and they still forcibly removed some random paying passenger just because someone on their staff wanted&#x2F;needed (anyone can clarify this part?) to board.<p>Here is an idea for United (your HR department can contact me, I&#x27;m available to hire for 50% of your CEO and I easily come up with much better ideas):<p>1 - you just have to simply get the attention of the passengers on the plane (if you can be a bit smart and do it OUTSIDE the plane it&#x27;s even better).<p>2- keep increasing the compensation you give one (or the needed) of them in order for them to catch a later flight.<p>Sooner or later someone would just accept the compensation. Also, that compensation wouldn&#x27;t be anything special anyway since you have a plane full of people competing for it. The passenger would be happy, United would get what it wanted and you wouldn&#x27;t have this media shitstorm in your hands.<p>Yes... it&#x27;s really <i>that</i> simple United (again, tell your HR department I&#x27;m available for hire).

I feel the current system of overbooking and how it is &quot;regulated&quot; is backwards, and airlines should rethink. Perhaps they could do some sort of an auction without a maximum. It is their problem after all, and a market mechanism seems a reasonable way to deal with this. Sometimes this would mean someone who does not care as much will gladly take $150 as compensation. Other cases might lead to much higher numbers.<p>The next bit will probably not make me particularly popular, seeing most of the reactions to this debacle, but here goes.<p>The airplane itself is not a suitable place for any form of protest. No ifs, buts or anything else.<p>Once the flight personnel asks you to leave the airplane, you leave. Take the fight outside of the airplane, in court or wherever or however you deem appropriate. But not on the plane. Your work&#x2F;patients&#x2F;personal tragedy is in no way relevant. If you disagree with the service offered, don&#x27;t use it. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Don&#x27;t claim you have no alternatives or whatever. Society does not owe you your preferred lifestyle in any way.<p>If this guy refused to leave after he was asked to do so, according to the rules het agreed by upon entering an agreement, and I would be delayed by the ensuing situation, I would even consider pursuing some form of legal action towards him.<p>Having said all that, I do feel the way commercial air travel is organised these days is beyond ridiculous. I therefore avoid it whenever and however I can. If more people did that, it would have changed by now. People don&#x27;t, so it doesn&#x27;t. Because most just feel entitled to whatever they feel entitled to, without any basis. Fuck them.<p>Oh, and screw airlines too.

Rough. I can see where he&#x27;s coming from though. This was a private email to employees, and in that context he definitely needs to be a cheerleader for them.<p>Overbookings are industry standard, and they called security for someone who wouldn&#x27;t leave. &quot;Correct&quot; protocol.<p>I think what most likely happened is the security guard that has been placed on leave did his job very poorly. As soon as he hit the passenger his coworkers probably thought &quot;Uh oh. We need to just get him out of here before this gets worse. Because this is not what&#x27;s supposed to happen.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s obvious to us though that calling security is a way to make ALL your customers unhappy, and should be avoided at whatever cost. They should have just kept raising their offer for passenger&#x27;s seats, that would be the better protocol.

While I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s possible an employee forwarded this email without official authorization, it is unlikely this email was written without the expectation that it would eventually make its way into the press. IOW, it&#x27;s been written with the public as its ultimate audience, I wouldn&#x27;t assume that it has anything that the CEO didn&#x27;t want the world to know.

As it turns out the explanations are completely false, as in, not based on facts:<p>a. It wasn&#x27;t overbooked. It was apparently exactly 100% booked and filled. Four paying customers were replaced by four non-paying crew. That is not an overbook situation, so United&#x27;s entire rule 25 in the contract of carriage doesn&#x27;t apply.<p>b. The removed customer didn&#x27;t violate a single listed reason under rule 21 of the contract of carriage. Where else in the contract is passenger removal permitted?<p>c. Even if it were an overbooking, the airline&#x27;s contract only says boarding can be denied. It doesn&#x27;t say anything about rescinding an authorization to board, i.e. changing their mind.<p>What&#x27;s going on here, are unwritten rules that they just made up out of thin air, convinced the police they exist, and got the police to do their dirty work. That rule is &quot;upon refusal to comply with a polite request, the airline will petition an ignorant police force to (violently) remove the passenger from the plane.&quot;<p>This perverted, uncivilized, unwritten rule needs to be challenged. I hope this passenger takes them to court without settling. It needs to become part of the public record. If he settles, the details will get buried behind a non-disclosure agreement, and we won&#x27;t actually learn that it&#x27;s the airline who violated their own contract of carriage, and the police almost certainly broke the law not just their policies, in physically removing this person from the plane.<p>And unfortunately most of the media has spread false information by saying that the airline can have a person thrown off a plane for pretty much any reason, which is only true if you agree. If you look at the written contract, removal in this case is not supportable, even with a very vivid imagination.

I just wish people would stop repeating that this was an overbooking issue, it wasn&#x27;t. Customers were being forced off the plane to allow employees on after the fact. That has nothing to do with overbooking.

Overbooking is an indefensible practice. You sell a service that you knowingly have no intention to provide to people who base their travel plans on that expectation. This is like playing Russian roulette with your customers. No sympathy for United.

Airlines are the worst.

Seriously, next time this happens how about raising the compensation for someone willing to take the later flight.<p>The Aircrew could announce on the PA that &quot;we&#x27;re very sorry that the fligth will be be delayed but we&#x27;re overbooked and still looking for X ppl willing to take the next flight. We&#x27;re offering a X $ compensation for your trouble.&quot;<p>Then you just increase X until you will find people willing to take the deal.<p>Idiots.

United used to only break guitars<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_Breaks_Guitars" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_Breaks_Guitars</a><p>Now they break passengers, too.

This whole situation reads like a playbook for how to have to resign from a CEO position.

It&#x27;s time to finally have an air passenger bill of rights as law!

How to fix this problem:<p>1. Hand out prefilled in vouchers&#x2F;checks to all the passengers with the amount filled in, which become valid when redeemed at the counter. There&#x27;s an irrational human thing that people hate losing something they have more than they like gaining something[1], so helping to feel like they are losing the $800 voucher by not redeeming it would be more beneficial. I imagine that having the (fake) voucher&#x2F;check in their hand would increase voluntary rates by a lot (and lower the compensation the airlines would need to pay), while only increasing some paper printing costs.<p>--- Other ideas ---<p>1b. Add in language during ticket purchase saying &quot;To keep prices low, bla bla bla, 1 in 20,000 passengers may be unable to fly. Purchase protection from this event for $1&quot;. The passengers that don&#x27;t purchase that protection would then be eligible for denied boarding, but at least they had more of a choice. Although, it still feels like &quot;guaranteed seat&quot; should just be included by default when you purchase a ticket (as I type this, it feels insane that &quot;guaranteed seat&quot; would be an upsell... but that seems to be the case).<p>1c. Offer more in compensation to passengers (obvious). This is not like eminent domain, where you need 100% of people in a given area to agree to something. You only need 4&#x2F;100 passengers to agree to something, it truly can work like an auction.<p>--- Other thoughts ---<p>1. Everyone is blaming United for this event, but is there a different US airline who this event couldn&#x27;t have happened to? They all have involuntary boardings, and presumably if you choose not to go peacefully, the airline will involve law enforcement. The only reason people leave peacefully when they don&#x27;t want to is because they know the airline has the ultimate physical control.<p>2. Jimmy Kimmel mentioned it, but you just cannot imagine this happening in any other industry. Being kicked out of a restaurant table after being seated, being kicked out of a hotel room just checked into, etc.<p>3. The management of United seems completely out of touch with sentiment and reality, given their statements. Using the word &quot;re-accomodate&quot; in a three sentence statement seems like a symptom of a larger problem... it should have been obvious how people would react to that. I believe they are so deep into their philosophy of &quot;this is how the industry works&quot; that they have lost sense of the bigger customer picture. It&#x27;s really as simple as: He bought a confirmed ticket with real money-&gt;boarded the plane-&gt;told ticket is no longer valid and kicked off. No amount of industry financial rationalization will change that.<p>4. This is still a rare issue, only about 1 in 15,000 flyers in the US is involuntarily denied boarding[2]. That said, United has 5x the rate as Delta, so this problem is not inherently terrible everywhere in the industry. Worth noting that this flight was operated by Republic, not United.<p>--Citations--<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;why-buyers-and-sellers-inherently-disagree-on-what-things-are-worth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;why-buyers-and-sellers-inherently-di...</a><p>[2]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;6331-presscdn-0-25.pagely.netdna-cdn.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016_12_26-B6DBs.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;6331-presscdn-0-25.pagely.netdna-cdn.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;u...</a>

I honestly don&#x27;t understand the outrage. A person was legally required to do something he didn&#x27;t want to do, he refused to relent and escalated the situation. The passenger is the only person I see as having done anything wrong here.<p>I don&#x27;t claim that there aren&#x27;t better ways to handle the situation, but I also don&#x27;t see any wrongdoing in how this shook out.

I think the video of this incident is frankly disgusting, but it&#x27;s not clear without more context why the situation escalated to the degree it did. For example, UA fly another plane 3 hours 20 minutes later to the same destination (which is to say, a very reasonable and perfectly expectable delay in any situation involving air travel), why did the doc need to be on exactly that plane, and why did the UA staff also have to be on exactly that plane?<p>One point in favour of UA though, is that they&#x27;re perfectly within their right to deny boarding for any reason whatsoever. Yes, it&#x27;s completely a dick move on their part, but just because they&#x27;re acting like dicks does not give a passenger the right to refuse disembarkation, it&#x27;s not his aircraft.<p>FWIW I 100% think the passenger was mistreated regardless, just saying there aren&#x27;t enough facts to pass judgement so easily