Unlikely, no corporation this big wants Discovery into what a shitshow they actually are. They’ll settle and the records will be sealed. Who was it that was campaigning against records of settlements ever being sealed?
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This causes me to reconsider the term “That’s the ticket!”
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I think it’s interesting that a corporation here is able to make up rules that basically, as far as the police were concerned, have the force of law behind them. That’s the sickening part behind this.
Our laws used to be about protecting the weak from the strong. In today’s word, the strong are the corporations and the people connected to them. This is just another example of what happens when there are no regulations in place that force a corporation to do the right thing.
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It’s oversold if United deems it oversold, as they did in this case. A flight can be oversold even if it has open seats that are being held because of weight restrictions or climate considerations. Even if it wasn’t oversold before, once it became apparent that they needed to move staff to Louisville, the flight was considered oversold.
Overselling a flight isn’t a mistake, it’s done on purpose with the assumption, based on their past data, that a certain number of passengers won’t show up or will misconnect. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
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Accepting what you say here, then the solution is to offer more compensation, not drag people off the flight.
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That still happens periodically (I’ve had it happen a couple times in the last 7 years or so). But less often now, because loyalty programs bump up status holding club members first. I recall flights when I was flying twice a week (or more) where I had the 75k mile status and was still #25 on the upgrade list. It’s usually the dead empty flights or redeye flights with few business travelers.
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Agreed.
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This really reminds me of those old World War II movies where the Nazis stop the train and haul some poor schnook off to be tortured. Once as a tragedy, once as a farce.
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Competition would take care of that in the long run. Fuck the airlines.
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He’s knocked out and will almost certainly have suffered irreversible damage to the soft tissues in his brain. If he is a surgeon, he may no longer be able to operate, fine motor control at the level to which surgeons have trained themselves is a very perishable skill.
He will likely suffer from severe pain and nausea, if he is very lucky, for no more than a couple of months, and will almost certainly suffer problems with his memory, cognition and emotional stability, to some degree, for the rest of his life. The effects could be subtle or they could be obvious.
If he has even one micro-tear in any of the blood vessels in his brain stem, he will be at a much higher risk for blood clots and the cerebral aneurysms and strokes associated with them.
This event will most likely change his life in a lasting, debilitating fashion.
Tens of millions would not be enough.
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I don’t dispute that United may want it to work this way, and even make that argument.
I am, however, very surprised that the contract doesn’t clearly cover United in this case. The situation has probably come up before and the one-sided contract doesn’t clearly protect the carrier as far as I can tell.
It does have this definition:
Oversold Flight means a flight where there are more Passengers holding valid confirmed Tickets that check-in for the flight within the prescribed check-in time than there are available seats.
If United is relying on logic that seats sometimes become unavailable while your sitting in it, you’d think they’d spell that out somewhere.
To the contrary, the section about dealing with oversold flights addresses only that passengers may be denied boarding. Now, board/boarding/boarded isn’t defined in the document, so I think we can assume that the unfortunate passenger was already boarded and all of the carrier’s protections from overselling don’t apply.
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Unless the FAA-enforced stuff about obeying flight crew instructions doesn’t apply until slightly later in the flight, I wouldn’t bet on getting much beyond the compensation already mandated for an ‘involuntary denied boarding’ situation.
I cannot fathom why United dove into this particular PR nightmare so willingly; but the actual liability incurred by playing overbooked and bump is pretty low.
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Setting aside the brutality of it all, if one can, how can United think, “gosh, it’s cheaper to stop the bidding at $800 and bring in the brut squad” than move the line up to some clearing price to get the requisite number of seats. At some price, people are going to take the offer – but this thing is going to cost UAL millions.
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Society in microcosm: people are realizing just how few seats are actually on the great social lifeboat.
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I really hope this gets litigated, rather than settled.
It’s not up to United (who will of course want to settle.) It’ll be litigated if the doctor wants it litigated. Maybe United will produce a better incentive than their previous high bid ($800) to make this problem disappear outside of the courtroom 
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Have the cops ever been the guys you want to see when a property holder says you are no longer welcome on their property?
Their enthusiasm in this case is particularly alarming; but their willingness to boot the guy who doesn’t own the place at the behest of the one who does seems like the oldest behavior in the book.
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It’s been awhile. Maybe they think if they don’t use their goodwill they’ll lose it.
(In fairness to United — not that it needs any — I can’t think of a single US airline I’d fly with if Amtrak could get me where I had to go in 24 hours or less. As far as I can tell, all the airlines are terrible.)
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Again, I think it’s hard to claim trespassing when he paid for a ticket and was allowed on the plane by a gate agent. Even in your click-through agreement dreams.
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That can’t be true, I see people knocked unconscious on TV every week and they’re always fine! They even jump up and chase the bad guys instead of throwing up. The also never lose teeth in fistfights.
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“Okay, now then, who wants $400? Nobody? Okay, now the offer is $300. Still nobody? $200. Getting closer to offering nothing again and just randomly picking something, so be aware of where your carry on baggage is so we can throw it on top of you on the jetway.”
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