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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

I'll definitely not be flying United or Delta ever again after this incident. Over-selling spaces on a plane is a scummy practice and shokldn't be allowed. When someone needs to cancel they still pocket the change fee or keep tne entire fee if they miss the flight. Seems like borderline fraud.

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Overbooking is an extremely common practice. In fact, I don't know of a single airline that doesn't overbook. On a plane with hundreds of seats you almost always get cancellations; the small amount of times you don't, you almost always get people volunteering to be pushed to the next flight in exchange for money (I've done it myself a few times as I don't mind working in airports).

Cases like these are exceedingly rare. There's a million fucked up things with how they handled the situation, starting with assaulting the passenger. Overbooking itself is the last thing you should be worried about.

starting with not simply not offering a better deal to the first other person who volunteered...

Like I said, there's a million things. But I'd say beating somebody up is far more criminal behaviour than having a stupid policy.

As with you, I'm not opposed to overbooking, but:

1) Overbooking should be handled at the gate.

2) I'd like to see an incredibly high legal ceiling for compensating passengers who voluntarily reschedule. $800 (4x the ticket price) or we'll drag some of you out of the plane is ridiculous. And let's not forget that the ceiling is only a legal limitation; it was United's discretion to stop the bidding at the legal ceiling and use force.

> Overbooking should be handled at the gate

It generally is. No idea why it wasn't in this case.

United completely fucked this up in so many ways. Like you said:

1. The overbooking issue should have been handled at the gate. Deplaning should only be done in extreme circumstances, this was not one.

2. The extra crew should have been boarded on a different flight when they didn't get enough volunteer leavers.

3. A much higher ceiling should be placed on the ticket compensation for the extreme cases, through an auction. I don't know if this is legally possible though, but if it's not I'm sure something can be worked out in miles/free future tickets/etc. Pre-flight deplaning costs a lot more in wasted time/delays and even more when it's forced with extra costs in bad press/publicity, security calls, etc. This is a classic example of wasting millions to save hundreds.

4. Security obviously used excessive force. The entire ordeal should have been halted and the CEO should have immediately spoken against their actions rather than come out supporting them.

It's one thing to make idiotic decisions, follow idiotic policies and cost people money. Physical assault is in a completely different ballpark. We have video evidence of what happened -- I hope to see the officer fired and prosecuted. I'm not holding my breath though.

Just because it's common, doesn't make it not scummy. Yes there are cancellations, but airlines usually charge change fees and if you don't make the flight you don't get a refund either--so this policy is win-win for the airlines and lose-lose for consumers.

>in exchange for money

Sure, but not everyone knows that the airlines have to give you money. Usually they offer like $200-$600 in flight vouchers which can only be used $50 per flight... so not really a good deal for most people. Lastly, as a paying customer I find it beyond disgusting and degrading that after finding a seat that United would violently remove and humiliate their customer. That's absolutely not worth it. And United could have just rebooked the excess passengers on a Southwest flight for under $200/each. This was a colossal fuck up by United, no matter how you spin it.

I've seen a lot of people with this type of attitude, but I honestly don't buy it for a second. Airline customers don't have any brand loyalty - all they care about is that $10 they save.

If you're serious about boycotting United and Delta then you'll also need to boycott the following airlines that codeshare:

  United Airlines	Trans States Holdings	
  United Airlines	Commute Air	
  United Airlines	ExpressJet	
  United Airlines GoJet	
  United Airlines	SkyWest	
  United Airlines	Air Canada
  United Airlines	Shuttle America	
  United Airlines	Mesa	
  United Airlines	Republic	
  United Airlines	Austrian 	
  United Airlines	All Nippon 	
  United Airlines	Lufthansa 	
  United Airlines	Brussels Airlines	
  United Airlines	Swiss International	
  United Airlines	Asiana 
  United Airlines	South African Airways
  United Airlines	Ethiopian 
  United Airlines	Air New Zealand 
  United Airlines	Air China

  Delta Airlines	Aeromexico	
  Delta Airlines	Aeromexico Connect	
  Delta Airlines	Air France	
  Delta Airlines	AF Regional	
  Delta Airlines	City Jet (AF)	
  Delta Airlines	Alitalia	
  Delta Airlines	Air One Cityliner (Alitalia)	
  Delta Airlines	CAI First (Alitalia)	
  Delta Airlines	China Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	China Eastern Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	China Southern Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	CSA Czech Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	GOL Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	KLM Royal Dutch Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	KLM Cityhopper	
  Delta Airlines	Korean Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	Olympic Air	
  Delta Airlines	Vietnam Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	Virgin Australia	
  Delta Airlines	Express Jet	
  Delta Airlines	Skywest	
  Delta Airlines	Shuttle America	
  Delta Airlines	Compass Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	Endeavor Air	
  Delta Airlines	GoJet Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	Aeroflot	
  Delta Airlines	Air Europa	
  Delta Airlines	Horizon Air	
  Delta Airlines	WestJet	
  Delta Airlines	Virgin Atlantic	
  Delta Airlines	Shanghai Airlines	
  Delta Airlines	Aerolineas Argentinas	
  Delta Airlines	Jet Airways, India LTD

You serious? $10? I'd pay an extra $10 any time to fly Delta because I prefer it. (I'm not aware of why we're boycotting Delta -- if there's something I need to know about why they should be boycotted then I'll reconsider.)

And it's not going to be a problem for me to avoid Ethiopian Airlines. Thanks though.

Thanks for the tip, I'll add them to my kayak filter.

No way, I'll gladly pay more to be on a Virgin or Southwest flight. Every United flight I've ever taken was sub-par and this recent story just solidifies my opinion of the company and that I will avoid them in the future.

Delta? How come Delta? The flights I've taken in the past couple of months have been with Delta and their service was fantastic.

D'oh! Never mind, I thought United had acquired Delta. I got them mixed up with Continental. My point was that the United brand will never get another dollar from me.

Wait wait wait....what's wrong with Delta?

Apparently they had something similar (?) happen.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/201...

I got them mixed up. I thought United bought Delta, but that was Continental.

Complain to your congressperson.

These sorts of problems are directly caused by deregulation. But be cautious, the benefit of allowing this sort of bullshit has been dramatically lower fares.

>dramatically lower fares.

Bullshit. Jetblue doesn't oversell and they aren't dramatically more expensive [1]. I think you're just believing what they want you to think. At most people are saving a couple dollars a flight.

1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-05/jetblue-n...

> Over-selling spaces on a plane is a scummy practice and shokldn't be allowed.

Without overbooking, you'd switch to complaining about thousand dollar domestic flights.

That's completely bullshit. Flights would be a few bucks more expensive at most, not thousands.

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