Airlines Customer Service (Re-accommodate Passenges)

When is a passenger not a passenger?
When he's on a United Airlines flight to Louisville



Please note the friendly personnal service.

United Airlines statement



Note the lack of an apology to the passenger.

I see a 6 figure lawsuit on the horizon

The law in these cases is clear if the Captain says you must leave the plane and you do not you are being obstructive and breaking the law.

Can an airline really treat passengers like this? - by Simon Calder, travel correspondent for the Independent
Yes. The captain is in charge of the aircraft. And if he or she decides that someone needs to be offloaded, that command has to be obeyed. From the moment that the unfortunate individual in this case said, "I'm staying put", he became a disruptive passenger.
From that moment he was disobeying the captain's command. Officials were legally entitled to remove him, and as the videos show, he was dragged from the plane. It appears from the evidence that the law was broken - by him, not by the airline. But I would be surprised if United pressed charges.

Unitied Airlines were in breach of their own rules.



The passenger was allowed back on the plane to continue his journey

They should have sorted this out at the departure gate before people boarded the plane, but once this happens on the plane the Captain can ask the person to leave the plane, if they do not they are being obstructive and they can be removed, they are breaking the law, been on a plane when the same thing happened, pre tweet,mobile phone era of course.

The avation office responsible for removing the passenger has been put on leave

The avation department state "The incident on United Flight 3411 was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure, and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the department."

The CEO's letter to staff has been leaked in which he says the staff behaved properly & that 4 passengers had to be removed so that 4 staff of a partner airline could be accommodated!

I see two issues here.

Firstly, those rules quoted above clearly apply to an 'oversold' flight. Was this flight, technically, oversold? As I understand it, the issue was creating four spaces for UA crew to fly back. It could be argued that creating space for your own staff is not being 'oversold', there was enough room on board for all the 'sold' passengers, and those passengers were on board and seated already. That is one that could end up being decided in a court of law, but either way, paying passengers should really take priority over your own staff, especially when they have been booked on board already, if those four had been late (oversold) passengers not staff, they would have been turned away.

The other issue is why, in this day and age, are airlines allowed to continue overselling flights in the first place. I know the argument that some passengers don't turn up so they usually can get away with it, and it is better than having half empty, and therefore unprofitable flights, but really, why is this allowed? In what other area do we stand for this kind of treatment. If you buy a ticket for any other event or activity, you expect that ticket to be honoured, that is the whole point of buying a ticket in the first place.

There is of course a third issue here, which is the appalling manner in which this seems to have been handled by the company, both on the day, and in the aftermath. The one good thing is that there seems to be a wave of disgruntlement aimed towards UA. It can only be hoped that people actually follow that up by choosing other airlines in future, but we shall see.

United Airlines have had almost a billion dollars shed off their shares today

The incident has not gone down well in South East Asia as 'The Doctor' is of Vietamese- American decent

I notice that they are now digging into the guys life, which is entirely irrelevant to the situation...surely.