United Airlines says controversial flight was not actually overbooked; CEO apologizes again - Sensationalist Headlines

[url]https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_rvideos_just_filled_with_united_related/dg3xvja/?context=3[/url] [quote]First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.[/quote] I found this on reddit, to me it's definitive they were in the wrong regardless of how he was taken off the plane.

[QUOTE=meek;52091309]Yeah, I can see why this event sparked conversation about overbooking but the system works. I've only been left out of a flight due to overbooking twice but both times I was really well compensated for it in addition to transportation+accomodation+meals paid for. Companies are happy to accomodate angry customers' demands because it's just so much cheaper than not overbooking flights.[/QUOTE] The only time I've ever had a problem with overbooking was with Air Canada on a business trip before they even started boarding, like I'm talking a good half hour at least before the gate opened. Basically, the flight was overbooked and they asked If I'd be willing to give up my seat. I said no and that was that, no fuss at all.

[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;52091380][url]https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_rvideos_just_filled_with_united_related/dg3xvja/?context=3[/url] I found this on reddit, to me it's definitive they were in the wrong regardless of how he was taken off the plane.[/QUOTE] you mean they quote 14 CFR 250 which is what I said was partcularly relevant and even linked to. No way.

[QUOTE]On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a. ... even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Code3Response;52091424]you mean they quote 14 CFR 250 which is what I said was partcularly relevant and even linked to. No way.[/QUOTE] Would you actually like to respond to the content of the post or are you just going to jam dicks back in your ears and keep pointing to the rule header as if it's the solution to all of life's problems?

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52091514]Would you actually like to respond to the content of the post or are you just going to jam dicks back in your ears and keep pointing to the rule header as if it's the solution to all of life's problems?[/QUOTE] Their post is literally citing the exact same thing I did. Maybe you should open my link

[QUOTE=Code3Response;52091540]Their post is literally citing the exact same thing I did. Maybe you should open my link[/QUOTE] If that's your way of saying "you and I disagree on what this means and it's going to take a judge to decide" I suppose you're right but you could be less passive-aggressive about it.

This $250 million dollars lost in stock is not as big of a deal as it might seem, it's not that uncommon to lose 1% in one day. Amazon, google and other big companies sometimes lose billions in one day and then corrected itself. Google has gone down 1.5% in the last 5 days, amazon down almost 1% in the past 5 days. This incident definitely affected the stock price but it's not as if United Airlines actually lost $250 million dollars which some people are suggesting.

[QUOTE=EskillV2;52090695]Lol, they fucked up hard. What they did was complete bullshit.[/QUOTE] Knowing how much flying is in demand I should probably invest in some shares. I'll bet it'll come back up.

[QUOTE=Code3Response;52090821]How are you connecting lost revenue from this to something that wasnt even fiscally viable to begin with. Chartering a private jet for 4 crew members is not cheaper nor was it ever, than those crew members either jumpseating or taking economy seats on a scheduled flight.[/QUOTE] Are you just being dense on purpose at this point?

[QUOTE=Code3Response;52091424]you mean they quote 14 CFR 250 which is what I said was partcularly relevant and even linked to. No way.[/QUOTE] You seemed to interpret it differently though. also your post just generally referenced the whole article and said 'involuntarily denial is included' the post I linked did a lot more to explain it to me and it seems to conflict with what you're saying

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52091564]If that's your way of saying "you and I disagree on what this means and it's going to take a judge to decide" I suppose you're right but you could be less passive-aggressive about it.[/QUOTE] passive aggressive is better than active aggressive [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52091514]Would you actually like to respond to the content of the post or [B]are you just going to jam dicks back in your ears [/B]and keep pointing to the rule header as if it's the solution to all of life's problems?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Fish_poke;52090943]It is 100% not cheaper. They'd be spending additional money on a charter flight instead of putting them on a flight already scheduled and accounted for in terms of finances. Market shares correct quickly, needless spending doesn't.[/QUOTE] How 'expensive' this little incident winds up being in the long run will depend on how many people boycott United over this. If they lose out on even a single full flight's worth of paying customers over this then it'll have been 'cheaper' for them to have just chartered a separate flight entirely instead of assaulting this dude and dragging him off of their plane. Of course it's not something that can really be proven because it's kind of difficult to show a lack of something ([I]i.e.[/I] how much money [I]hasn't[/I] entered the company from paying customers), but in theory their revenue will wind up being lower than it could have been had they not fucked up so hard that customers are now actively going out of their way to [I]not[/I] fly United.

[QUOTE=butre;52092129]passive aggressive is better than active aggressive[/QUOTE] not particularly relevant to the thread but honestly passive aggression is a little more dickish. not only is hypothetical passive aggressive person antagonizing me, they're antagonizing me in a manner that is intended to make it difficult for me to respond to the antagonism through the social equivalent of "I DIDN'T ACTUALLY TOUCH YOU SO HA"

[QUOTE=sltungle;52092226]How 'expensive' this little incident winds up being in the long run will depend on how many people boycott United over this. If they lose out on even a single full flight's worth of paying customers over this then it'll have been 'cheaper' for them to have just chartered a separate flight entirely instead of assaulting this dude and dragging him off of their plane. Of course it's not something that can really be proven because it's kind of difficult to show a lack of something ([I]i.e.[/I] how much money [I]hasn't[/I] entered the company from paying customers), but in theory their revenue will wind up being lower than it could have been had they not fucked up so hard that customers are now actively going out of their way to [I]not[/I] fly United.[/QUOTE] Consumers in general are fickle and will likely only support a boycott if the following happens: a) United as a service becomes unreliable (i.e. high cancellations, delays, more involuntary bumping, poor customer service beyond the incident) b) Price increases to a point where they stop being competitive with other airlines. Usually, this is a cascade failure where reason a) causes them to hemorrhage money, driving them to do b) to stem the cash loss, making things worse. This is a one off incident that will drop off the media news cycle and consumers will continue to fly United, as long as they price competitively and they service the most destinations reliably. This was a fucking PR disaster and if anything, had the CEO not swallowed his pride and stopped apologizing for the overbooking situation instead of the mistreatment of a paying customer right out of the gate (as he should have), he'd have been kicked out. The problem is that this is also the same person who's also helped UAL's stock price gain almost 40 dollars over the span of little less than a year, which for a commercial airline is nothing short of impressive. Thowing [I]him[/I] out would've been bad for business, so they must've internally forced him to apologize and smoothen things over while the PR team worked to unfuck this mess. Two weeks from now, the news will be entirely dominated by Trump-related news and cycle of forgetting until the next outrage will be complete.

[QUOTE=snookypookums;52092530]Consumers in general are fickle and will likely only support a boycott if the following happens: a) United as a service becomes unreliable (i.e. high cancellations, delays, more involuntary bumping, poor customer service beyond the incident) b) Price increases to a point where they stop being competitive with other airlines. Usually, this is a cascade failure where reason a) causes them to hemorrhage money, driving them to do b) to stem the cash loss, making things worse. This is a one off incident that will drop off the media news cycle and consumers will continue to fly United, as long as they price competitively and they service the most destinations reliably. This was a fucking PR disaster and if anything, had the CEO not swallowed his pride and stopped apologizing for the overbooking situation instead of the mistreatment of a paying customer right out of the gate (as he should have), he'd have been kicked out. The problem is that this is also the same person who's also helped UAL's stock price gain almost 40 dollars over the span of little less than a year, which for a commercial airline is nothing short of impressive. Thowing [I]him[/I] out would've been bad for business, so they must've internally forced him to apologize and smoothen things over while the PR team worked to unfuck this mess. Two weeks from now, the news will be entirely dominated by Trump-related news and cycle of forgetting until the next outrage will be complete.[/QUOTE] I have no argument with the fact that the majority of people probably won't remember or won't care about this a few weeks or months in the future, but the point I was trying to make is that it only takes a [I]single plane's worth of people[/I] to boycott United for a [I]single flight[/I] of there's for it to have been economically more beneficial (although only marginally, by an amount of four paying customers) for United to have simply put their four staff members onto a flight by themselves. They don't need to be boycotted indefinitely, people just need to boycott them in a reactionary move once off for United to wind up worse off economically than they would have been if they had merely arranged a flight for their staff.

[QUOTE=sltungle;52092590]I have no argument with the fact that the majority of people probably won't remember or won't care about this a few weeks or months in the future, but the point I was trying to make is that it only takes a [I]single plane's worth of people[/I] to boycott United for a [I]single flight[/I] of there's for it to have been economically more beneficial (although only marginally, by an amount of four paying customers) for United to have simply put their four staff members onto a flight by themselves. They don't need to be boycotted indefinitely, people just need to boycott them in a reactionary move once off for United to wind up worse off economically than they would have been if they had merely arranged a flight for their staff.[/QUOTE] That's the thing and I agree with your sentiment, however there are these the consider: a) The personnel on ground likely lack the authority to charter such a flight on company compensation. b) Following the incident and a likely thorough internal investigation which would no doubt have the same question you asked, they still proceeded with a PR disaster indicates that they did the calculations internally and figured they'd ride it out and still be cheap. c) This also doesn't take into account the fact that United likely [I]had[/I] employees to cover the shortfall at the destination already present. Unless of course they were on mandatory leave/union-designated leave, they could've paid OT to staff locally at the destination and put these folks on a later flight to relieve them. This was a stupid decision, but within the realm of the decisions that were within the authority of the person who had to make them at the time. What I do think United should do to make this right is an investigation into employee corruption, because they violated the rules. America has enough of this "brothers in blue" crap being used to sweep LEO infractions under the rug; this kind of rot should not be allowed to fester in other industries. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars"]For context, the last time something like this happened, United "lost" almost 180 million dollars in stock value due to the then United CEO Carroll's ham-fisted way of dealing with PR as well. [/URL]

[QUOTE=Code3Response;52091052]"They are a common carrier and is subject to common carrier regulations. I dont know what all that is because that is outside of my area of expertise" aaaand its time to stop watching. If you dont know what those are, you are not going to understand anything else. Particularly relevant for this is [URL="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-250"]14 CFR 250[/URL] which is federal regulations regarding overselling/overbooking. And not surpringsly, involuntarily denial is included. This is printed on your ticket. Where his argument lies is in the definition of boarding. Which I am willing to speculate the airlines will define as from when the gate opens to when the airplane door is closed.[/QUOTE] So does the US government like give you good boy points every time you defend any given established system or what

[QUOTE=Code3Response;52091540]Their post is literally citing the exact same thing I did. Maybe you should open my link[/QUOTE] Their post does cite 14 CFR 250, but if you actually fucking read any of their post they state that none of the clauses in that law apply in this case, because the flight was [I]not[/I] overbooked. Each seat had a paying passenger in it, and they wanted to boot 4 people to accommodate employees. 14 CFR 250 only applies in the case of overbooking. If you're going to defend United's actions this hard, you should actually know what the fuck happened. Literally the first policy defined in the law starts with "In the event of an oversold flight" and as stated over and over again (even in the title of the fucking thread that you've had to click on to enter), the United flight was [I]not[/I] overbooked or oversold.