…from The Life, having to fly regularly is at the top of the freaking list. Yup, I’m reminded of this by the United thing. Note that I’m calling it a ‘thing’ because the story’s very new, and very new stories have a certain tendency to get more nuanced as the days go on. So you want to be careful about that.
Note, however, that one issue here that’s getting lost in the shuffle is that airlines routinely overbook flights. Given how joyful and serene the average flying experience is these days, it’s a minor miracle that flights manage to take off without anybody bleeding over a seat. Maybe that’s why the TSA still keeps looking for weapons in our luggage…
I wouldn’t call it “overbooking” when you let everyone on the plane and then tell some of them “oh, sorry, you need to get off the plane.”
United made a stupid mistake, then they made an unforgivable one.
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The stupid mistake was not realizing they needed crew spaces and issuing too many boarding passes. That’s a particularly embarrassing mistake for United, but … forgivable.
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Then, they doubled down.
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They put *themselves* before their customers, and instead of offering progressively larger bribes, they claimed a legal right … one that is *morally* a wrong.
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They should have put the darn crew on a competitors’ plane instead of having a passenger roughed up. It’s unforgivable.
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It’s the arrogance I’ve come to expect from United crews and workers, but this time they broke a line – they *made a passenger unsafe* …
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Never again, United. Updating corporate travel profile and listing United as “will not accept”.
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Won’t miss ya!
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Mew
I have heard a number of commentators say that the reason United didn’t just keep increasing the compensation for volunteering to be bumped is because the amount that you are given from being bumped from a flight is capped by law.
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If that is indeed the case, someone in Congress could probably earn themselves some good will by repealing that law ASAP. Not likely to happen, but the past year has been full of surprises.
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I’m not excusing United’s actions though. And their CEO afterwards has not helped his case in the least.
I would like to see a cite for that law.
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I would also point out that the law* on this is probably kin to the law that governs “gifts” at trade shows, i.e. “government employees are able to receive items of up to $25 in value”.
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I once watched a trade show host and his booth babe coterie work a crowd where they made the claim that the new-in-box current-gen iPod “was worth $25” ..
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In other words, United could hand off $5000 in comps and *claim* it had a value of $(dollar cap) on their books.
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Standard caveats** apply.
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Mew
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* without finding and reading the law
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** I am not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn last night.