Pathetic: United’s CEO Makes The Denied Boarding Fiasco Even Worse

...there are actually people who have commented blame placed toward the passenger. There is commentary from fellow passengers who were actually on the flight who confirm that the booted passenger was not belligerent. He was frustrated, and rightfully so, but not aggressive. It's easy to point a finger, especially when none of us are in the position of this man. United cold have handled the situation better. Gate agents as well as in-flight personnel flex their supposed "authority" all of the time. This is disgraceful, to say the least. Sure, the employees were following protocol -- but only up to a point. Call the police, because a passenger says he won't give up a seat that he has paid for? Cowards. This is where customer service would have been appreciated. Make a general announcement to let the ENTIRE aircraft know that due to the fact that there are no volunteers, and according to company policy, there will be a randomization of customers selected to involuntarily egress the aircraft. They should have made mention of the incentive, if any, asked if there were any questions and let the customers know when the process would begin and the passengers, thereby, notified. This incident calls for a definite revision of policy, on behalf of the company, and definite litigation on behalf of the abused passenger. How dare people even fix their fingers to type that this is at all the fault of the passenger. None of us were there. Let's see you remain composed if approached as the fellow passengers state he was approached. Let's see you ask questions and have a gate-agent interpret your questions for aggression. Let's see you keep your cool while being dragged off of an aircraft by police. Let's see how appreciative you are when people tell you the reason for your treatment is YOU. Really?

@Miguel

It's worse than that, United may have violated its own IDB procedure although the passenger's lawyer will have a field day of whether this ought to be classified as even IDB once you're on board. Specifically the priority in United's own IDB contract of carriage says

"The priority of all other confirmed passengers may be determined based on a passenger’s fare class, itinerary, status of frequent flyer program membership, and the time in which the passenger presents him/herself for check-in without advanced seat assignment." (RULE 25 DENIED BOARDING COMPENSATION, A-2b).

If the UX agent really did "random picking" this would be a violation of this rule if it came to light the passenger held priority due to any of those items.Secondly here's the rub the passenger in question did not do anything per se that was in breach of the contract of carriage's rules for authorization of UA to refuse transport, the fact that he's later allowed back on the plane albeit bleeding and it sounds like he was allowed to travel to his destination implies that someone either gave up their seat or UA was able to find someone else to go instead.

Lastly for those saying UA was being generous, here's UA's specific terms of compensation (again IDB at that point may be nebulous):

"UA shall pay compensation to Passengers denied boarding involuntarily from an Oversold Flight at the rate of 200% of the fare to the Passenger’s first Stopover or, if none, Destination, with a maximum of 675 USD if UA offers Alternate Transportation that, at the time the arrangement is made, is planned to arrive at the Passenger’s Destination or first Stopover more than one hour but less than two hours after the planned arrival time of the Passenger’s original flight".

This amount goes up to a max $1350 only if the next available flight on UA metal (it would seem also at UA's discretion) arrives over 2 hours past the original flight time.

Looking at the flight schedule for say Thursday of this week the same flight leaves at 9am local time with the next departing flight also leaving at 10:45 am but arriving at 8PM! at night. In fact that passenger's only alternative if he stayed with United was to catch a 5:45pm flight which would also arrive at 8pm at night. Depending on what time the passenger caught his flight he may have been out of luck of ANY flight availability.

https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=ORD;t=SDF;d=2017-05-04;r=2017-05-06;tt=o;a=UA

I'm personally convinced UA's legal team is having a collective aneurysm right now with Munoz's email

@Matt Vorwald - they should have never, ever allowed the situation to escalate to the point that the police needed to be called. As someone said above, police should be used to protect public safety, not protect United from its own revenue management and reservation issues.

From media reports, it appears that the passengers were offered a transportation voucher ($800 or $1000), a hotel room, and a flight at 15:00 on Monday, 22 hours after their originally scheduled flight. That's crap compensation for such a long delay. And passengers likely don't trust that the airline isn't trying to pull a fast one with vouchers...

United had lots of choices:

1) They could have further overbooked their other ORD-SDF flights that evening and the next morning, so that passengers on this flight would face less than a delay - and dealt with buying passengers off those flights later;
2) They could have offered passengers carriage via a connecting city;
3) They could have offered a flight to a nearby city, with arranged ground transportation from there;
4) They could have offered passengers a flight on American (if available);
5) They could have increased compensation. For $10K cash do you think someone would have got off? I do. If you agree, its clear that there was a price that would have gotten someone off the plane somewhere between $800 in vouchers and $10K cash. Find that price.

Instead, they chose to call the police to solve their problem for them, and created a massive PR mess.

Munoz's statement makes it worse. Either employees are empowered to find and use the solutions above, or they are not. If not, its a failure of Munoz and his management team. That's what his message to employees should have addressed.

Lucky,

For all your complaining of how bad United is for calling the cops, you have yet to answer this important question...

What should they have done?

Serious question... how is one supposed to handle a passenger who refuses to comply with lawful crew orders, in violation of serious regs? Are you suggesting the passenger was not in direct violation of important laws governing passenger behavior? What can they do other than call police when someone refuses to leave the airplane when commanded to do so?

Yup. I'm not sure why people keep saying this flight was oversold when that's not the case at all. Having to make room for "must-ride" transit employees is not the same as over-selling a flight.

There are set rules and regulations to make sure these employees get to their destination that gate employees must follow. There's no excuse for the employees working this flight to have taken so long to sort this out. The offers made to the passengers seem pretty half-assed since it's not that difficult to ask a manager for additional compensation. Once you reach a $1000~ offer you will generally have passengers giving up their seats, no problem. None of this would have happened if the gate agents had properly done their jobs before the boarding process.

how would you feel if this was your grandfather, dad or uncle? Getting grabbed/pulled off, treated like a criminal, no hands should be on you with force not committing a crime. I will not give 1 cent to united ever again, I have twin teen girls that wear comfortable clothes especially on family transcon flights, will they be denied boarding wearing what 99% of kids wear? My dad is set in his ways too, I could see him being stubborn not wanting to give up his payed seat, will he get dragged off a flight because it's oversold? i was tempted to fly united BOS/SFO/OGG with a nice little layover @ the San Francisco AMEX lounge (near united gate) but now I changed plans Alaska miles on Virgin bos/lax/ogg with a layover enjoying LAX In-N-Out.

Yes this a serious topic but it's also a travel/flying blog too. side story: my favorite local airline jetblue kicked me off a flight because I wanted to change seats not to sit near a passenger with a stress dog, the dog smelled like dogs do (dog butt), so I asked please can I move to the rear? FA acted like I was nuts for wanting to move, she then told me it's ok for a legal animal on a flight, ok, but I still want to move, and I said she sounded like a robot after seeing her roll her eyes as I was speaking, for that she got in B*TCH mode then removed me for being disruptive. Do I blame B6 for 1 Robotic (senior) FA that loves smelly dogs? No I'm flying to FLL next weekend.

In short, united should have offered more, $1k no dice? Offer Max if it's so important? $350 more I think would've been someone's number (full plane 100 plus passengers) maybe all could've been avoided, why not use all your bullets United? Try everything before sending a squad to remove a stubborn old guy, my 2 cents.

United had the option to fly the plane with the paying customers and without the deadheading crew. The airline's failure to plan crew positioning is not the problem of the passengers on this flight.

The consequence for United is a subsequent uncrewed flight, with a planeful of distressed passengers. The magnitude of this cost should have focused the airline's attention on appropriate levels of incentive to persuade one of these passengers to disembark. We are talking 5 figures of disruption to the airline, if not 6. Legal limits be damned: as others have suggested, United Club memberships (lifetime?), or a pair of F tickets to anywhere UA flies, or some other high value compensation.

Hi Ben! Always enjoy your blog, and am a loyal follower. I agree with you mostly but have to point out that you are a bit mistaken about Munoz. He is NOT well liked, at least not by United customers. He has pretty consistently displayed particular disregard, if not, disdain for his own customers and it shows with the worst customer satisfaction ratings among ALL American carriers. United also has the highest boarding denials among ALL American carriers. And despite record profits, although United again is dead last among ALL American carriers for profitability, United is last in upgrades to lounges, food, plane interiors, etc., much of which you have pointed out in many of your reports. It was fine for Munoz to support his employees but he DID NOT HAVE to attack the customer to do it. All he had to say was that he supported his employees while promising to get to the bottom of what happened and make this right for everyone involved. But true to form and consistent with his fired/forced to resign predecessor, Jeff Smisek, blaming the customer was foremost in his mind. Until United gives the boot to the remaining Continental executives from the merger, United will continue to be last at a lot of things and first at blaming the customer for all of its woes!

I have avoid flying United for a long time. Few months ago, I few from Haneda to SFO in F. While their F is nothing to write home about, and the FAs were poorly trained, I can tell the FAs were trying very hard so I thought to myself, United isn't too bad as long as I take their Polaris F. Was looking at another F flight this summer to Asia on United couple days ago. But after seeing this debacle and Munoz's poorly worded statement to the media this morning and then his poorly written letter to the employees tonight, I shall stay away from this airline. I thought Munoz is better than this. Clearly I'm wrong. There is still time for him to right the wrong. The smartest thing for Munoz to do would be publicly apologize to this man and outline what United would do if they need to bump people off.

Better yet, all of us need to write to our senators and have them enact laws to require airline stop overselling seats. Remember in 2010, congress enacted a law so that airlines cannot keep passengers stuck on planes without going anywhere for longer than three hours. Well, it's time for congress to step in again. I'm sure this will be music to Munoz's ears... (sarcasm). ;)

Perhaps others have covered this, but one shocking thing is that United Express had a later flight scheduled between ORD and SDF. Flight 3411 was scheduled to depart at 5:40pm (and, due to this incident, actually departed at 7:40pm), but United Express had a later flight scheduled to depart at 9pm, flight 4448. (Source: Google)
Was the 9pm flight also oversold? If not, if United Express was unable to persuade four paying customers of flight 3411 to take seats on the later 9pm flight, why didn't United Express place their own employees on the 9pm flight 4448?
Alternatively, if both Sunday nights flights were oversold, perhaps United Express should have just hired a limo driver to take their employees to Louisville. Travel time: 5 hours.

@Farnorthtrader -- "What would you have had the crew do? Just let him stay?" Yes. Let him stay, for crying the FUCK out loud. If a nonthreatening passenger is so adamant about staying on board, please just move on and try to boot the next person in line.

As for your claim you'd "plead with the other passengers" -- this is in fact smart, but saying it the way you did is absolutely tone-deaf. The bloodied passenger is obviously an immigrant, therefore not appraised of the nuances of American culture.

@Mark -- can you please let us know when or where the passenger asked to be assaulted?

Perhaps instead of taking videos and talking about the poor doctor who had to be removed from the flight, all the fellow compassionate passengers might have wanted to volunteer to disembark.
I haven't seen any commenter that has provided a better solution at the point of the passenger refusing to obey crew member instructions. What would you have had the crew do? Just let him stay? Get everybody's excuse why they shouldn't be the one to leave, then take a vote to see who gets voted off?
IDBs happen every day on every airline and are handled pretty much the same way (minus already being on the plane). No issues until this guy decides that he is more important than everyone else and doesn't have to follow the rules. Still united staff remain calm and follow proper procedures. Then the guy refuses to cooperate with law enforcement (this is the hero of our story?), who probably should have been able to restrain him without hurting him. Somehow the bad guy is not the guy who broke the rules then broke the law, it is not the law enforcement officer who might have used undue force, it is the airline who followed a process that every airline follows every day.
Now the CEO of the company whose employees did exactly what they were supposed to do supports his employees and gets crapped on for it. What a strange world this is.
For those who say this could happen to any one of us, absolutely wrong. I would either have followed instructions or, if I really did need to be on that plane (which this guy apparently did not, despite his inflated sense of self importance), I would plead with the other passengers to have someone get off instead. There is no way I push them to the point of calling law enforcement and I sure don't resist law enforcement. Of course, I don't think I am more important than everyone else, so that may be the difference.

United gate agents marked those employees as "dead heading" or "must-ride". Those gate agents had plenty of time to accommodate these four employees since dead-heading employees don't show up this last minute. This is completely different than when they ACTUALLY oversell the flight to other customers. These employees should be been accommodated long before boarding began.

Corporate protocol is to contact a supervisor to authorize additional compensation options if nobody takes what is offered. Clearly that was not followed in this case.

@Lucky I feel the right response of United should be a proposed solution in the event that things like this happened in future. For example, United could say to provide incentives that moreover attractive in future.., for example, $1000 USD cash + One free new year of United Club access. Or they would give a notice to customer if it is overbooked. (Which should know anyway at time of check in closed) In this case, United have so many ways to move their crew members but they chose the worst possible way, and I feel United didn't even seem to realize that since they never mentioned why their crew members must board on this flight rather than taking a car or on American's flight. Oscar in this case, is trying to please United employees rather than customers.

I hope United can explain why they must let those crew members board on that flight in next correspondence.

@Pete

If the Asian passenger does not take the $1350, then someone will.

No offers?

>Add in unrestricted 1st class on the flight back or the entire round trip journey, comp the international first class lounge for the flights.
>Still need a person. Most air crews stay at Marriott or Sheraton. Offer a Executive level suite for the delay. Throw in a free car service.
>Ask them for the cost of the vacation or work and DOUBLE it. The hotel costs $250 at the destination? Here is $500 in cash plus the $1,350 in cash. You earn $300 a day at work? Here is $600 in cash.
>Still no takers? Offer an additional first class round trip journey for the United States. Nobody biting?
International first class to any destination we fly to, round trip for free,
>Nothing yet, waive the standard limit. Everything I mentioned plus $2,000 in cash.

I think that most would make the deal at level two.

@Paul

how much did United pay you to comment lol

but nevertheless responding to that question, you will be surprised as to how far people are willing to go to avoid flying with a company that denies a minimum sense of decency and respect to its customers. I can deal with cutting free food and booze, deal with inattentive service, but I will absolutely refuse to support a corporation that does not respect a minimum level of moral decency. Sure, the passenger should've listened to crew and police, but hey, if you ever found yourself in a situation where perhaps the next morning you have a multi million dollar deal to sign, or your father's funeral to attend, are you sure you'll just pack up and leave the plane? Other pax left maybe because they weren't in such an emergency, and figured the $800 voucher was a decent compensation even if it wasn't enough to actively volunteer for (maybe because you were uncertain of the terms attached to the voucher). Just my dos centavos.

@Franklyn

The airlines could deal with bumps better. They have no problem charging you the market rate for the last seat and the reverse should be true. If they needed seats they should have upped their offer and it should have been cash and I guarantee you they would have got volunteers pretty quick. Folks don't like the vouchers because of their limit, expiration dates etc. While the police have plenty of blame here so does United. Also why did the crew have to be scheduled so last minute again this was possibly avoidable?