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Comment by jpollock | Hacker News Reader

Even if it wasn't a passenger overbooking, it was overbooking in that they failed to properly account for the likelihood of having to ship crews around their network.

If their occupancy ratio was lower, then there wouldn't have been a problem, they could have fit the crew in. If they reserved 4 seats for crew on every flight, again there wouldn't have been a problem.

If they had even reserved 2 seats and run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time there wouldn't have been a problem.

If they had brought crew in from two different starting points - it would have been fine.

It's still overbooking, just not oversold tickets.

The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.

Much like an ISP having all their IP traffic going down one pipe, and not having enough room to send out the customer invoices because everyone is watching Netflix.

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If they had recognized that they needed 4 seats for crew before the passengers scanned their tickets and walked down the jetway as is usually done they wouldn't have had a problem.

They could have started the process before the flight booked, asking for volunteers before they got seated and attached to the idea of being on that flight. If they had no volunteers, they could probably have randomly selected passengers to deny boarding, and rejected them at the gate. While I am offended by them violently dragging the man out of his seat and off the plane, if the ticket scanner doesn't blink green the passenger likely won't force his way onto the plane, and if he was injured by security while doing so, public opinion would not be so united against the airline.

Exactly! This wasn't the last chopper out of Saigon. Someone would have given up their seat in exchange for more money.

...so united against United. ;)

>The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, they just didn't follow through with the correct way to free up seats, which is increasing the bid.

Some family cleared something like $13,000 in amex gift cards during the delta debacle last week by volunteering their seats multiple times. If you keep increasing the bid, you will find a price at which someone will give up their seat.

Compared to the 1.6 billion that came off the stock price, anything looks cheap.

The current price is the same as it was 5 days ago. There's no meaningful impact to the stock price, it was a temporary retreat.

We dont know that yet. Lets see how this quarter and next quarter and the lawsuit turn out.

In this case, semantics matter. Overbooking is a legally protected practice, but what you're trying to wedge into the definition of 'overbooking' is not.

If terms and definitions matter, the legal term you are looking for is actually "oversales", not overbooking which is a colloquial term

Overbooking is generally used as a synonym of oversales. Trying to redefine overbooking right now to mean something else is just going to cause confusion.

There's a rhetorical difference where "overbooking" puts the onus on the customer, and "oversales" puts it where it should be: on the airline who sold the extra tickets.

And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.

How can "overbooking" possibly put the onus on the customer? Overbooking is entirely within the control of the airline, and the customer doesn't have the capacity to overbook, or even the knowledge as to whether overbooking could possibly occur.

> And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.

Well yes, that's the whole point of this discussion, that calling it "overbooking" or "oversales" is wrong.

Yes, overbooking/oversales are effectively synonyms, but that's not the issue at all here. Overbooking is purchased and reserved seating over capacity.

The plane was fully booked and boarded at capacity, and then 4 more seats were cleared by physically removing passengers. Collapsing these events by saying it's an overbooking issue overlooks the very important timeline in between the plane being booked/boarded and then initiating a removal of said passengers, instead of denying them in the first place.

The request for 4 seats should've arrived before the boarding process (or at least before it ended), that's the problem.

I don't know why you're trying to make this argument with me, since it's unrelated to the actual discussion taking place in this subthread.

Overbooking: People bought too many tickets

Oversales: The airline sold too many tickets

It's a thin distinction to be sure, but it reads with rhetorical significance to me.

No, there is literally no distinction at all. The customer cannot possibly buy too many tickets, they can only buy as many tickets as the airline sells. So the only way to overbook is by the airline selling too many tickets.

Even if that is the case, there are much better methods of dealing with a situation like this than calling a police officer. It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force. The man is lucky they didn't taze him. The crew should have known that. It's good that this policy is about to change, but it is too little too late.

I assume you meant "taze", as in incapacitated him with a Taser electroshock weapon. It's an unfortunate typo, because he seemed quite thorougly distressed, disheveled and without composure - fazed.

Yes, thank you for the correction!

It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force

My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shrug their shoulders, leave, and let the man have his way; 2) He's going to be forcefully removed.

That is, as far as I can tell, the actual reality of the situation. And anybody advocating for outcome #1 probably has some thinking to do about what it actually means to have a police force at all.

> 2) He's going to be forcefully removed.

Yet why does the forceful removal of that passenger justify knocking him down and dragging him off the plane? There's plenty of ways to forcefully remove someone from something without doing what they did.

Police is allowed to apply force, but that doesn't immediately give them the right to go loco.

This, like the notion that police should aim for the knees when shooting at suspects, is one of those perennial concerns that doesn't survive contact with reality. Once force is applied, you shouldn't be surprised when things go wrong. Force is messy. Which is why, yes, it should be viewed as a last resort.

Maybe there are better ways to resolve this situation wrt to the police and the airline. But I think basic common sense says that there are much better ways this passenger could have handled it, too. At some point it must have been obvious to any reasonable person that 1) the cops weren't going to change their minds; and that 2) force would eventually and inevitably be applied to resolve the situation in their favor.

Once the police were there, he resolved it the best possible way for him; he stood his ground, got a little banged up, and will not be quite rich for the idiocy of everyone involved.

Exactly this. It's not hard to understand. If you know you're right, and you're not afraid of being assaulted, stand up for yourself; or in his case, stay seated (for the wise guys). If someone told you that you'd be entitled to millions for going through what this guy did, you'd take it 100 times out of 100.

That's not to downplay how horrendously the situation was handled. The airline deserves to pay damages, and he deserves the money. But, to suggest that he didn't help by not cooperating is one of the silliest ideas swirling around.

I expect the police to police, as in, maintain law and order. As I understand it, neither were broken at said impasse.

Again, I have come to expect very little of American police. The crew should have known better than calling the police. I blame more the crew and probably their textbook for unleashing the dogs, rather than the dogs biting.

Edit: seems this doesn't apply because the doors hadn't been closed yet. See below

I found this law which, from a layman's perspective and based on my understanding of the sequence of events, the passenger violated: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504

"An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life."

If a flight attendant asked him to get off the plane and he belligerently refused, that would seem to be a violation of this law.

Note that I'm not arguing that the original request was justified OR that the police response was justified.

Your reading is flawed.

49 U.S. Code § 46501 - Definitions (1) “aircraft in flight” means an aircraft from the moment all external doors are closed following boarding— (2) “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” includes any of the following aircraft in flight:

And to preempt more of this nonsense, FAR 91.3 and 91.11 don't apply either, those are for operational safety purposes. This is a contract of carriage issue, and what the airline tried to do is not in that contract.

The passenger was within his right to peacefully refuse to cooperate, in this instance, as reported.

Thanks for the clarification.

The article suggests that the airline was the one breaking the law and not the passenger. So in this case the police helped the airline commit a crime. Is this nowadays what means to have a police force?

There are currently 18 mentions of 'police' on this page, but they were security, not police. That's a crucial detail.

They were sworn law enforcement officers working for the city of Chicago.

There's room for them to have different authority than other Chicago police, I haven't found anything in a couple minutes of looking, but they aren't private security or anything like that.

The central thesis of my argument is that the ins and outs of each side's claims can be litigated later on. At that moment, the cops probably don't (and likely in principle can't) know exactly who is right and who is wrong and in fact this isn't at all the role we expect the police to fill.

If the police didn't know who was wrong then maybe instead of using force, they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.

Instead they chose a side to favor by force.

> If the police didn't know who was wrong

The police won't arbitrate a civil matter.

> they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.

If they asked the airplane to cancel the flight they could then remove the man from the plane? You're arguing that if United cancelled the flight for everyone that would render the contract of carriage moot for all and then the person would no longer have a claim to a seat?

Yes. If they removed the passenger and the flight went on, then they would favor one party. If the flight was canceled, they would favor neither party, a much more just approach if you can't know which party is in the wrong.

If the flight was canceled, the contract wouldn't be moot but the case would need to be resolved outside the plane anyway. As the plane wouldn't be anymore part of the problem, the airline could ask for the passenger to be removed on the ground that he was trespassing. The passenger could also ask the police make sure that the plane stays grounded.

This is deeply naive. They are civil servants, an arm of the executive branch of government, and we expect they will do lawful things, not unlawful things to be figured out later, and only if you can afford a good attorney to do this litigation you seem to think is the appropriate default scenario.

Your position strikes me as compatible with an authoritarian police state. And that is not the system of government we have in the U.S.

It is part of the job description for police to, at all times evaluate the legality of what they're doing. Otherwise, they are just hired thugs, might makes right, let a judge sort it out. And if they are merely hired thugs, that makes them untrustworthy by default as civil servants, and will even be viewed as capricious. What's the standard of the moment?

And in fact, that's why Black Lives Matter is even a thing. The police aren't trusted in some communities, because they have so often simply reacted with force. That's what the politics requires, and is a betrayal in those communities. Use force now, sort out the injustices later (maybe). That's a recipe for loss of trust, other than, do what they say or they will beat your ass. That's not justice in any possible sense of a civil society.

I believe this is correct. If there is a civil argument, it can be heard in an appropriate venue. But once the owner/operator of an FAA regulated aircraft has asked you to leave you no longer have any recourse and the word of the airplane crew carries quite a bit of weight.

I'm seeing the suggestion that United broke the law which doesn't quite seem to be what this article is saying. The article is saying they breached their own contract of carriage. This would allow for damages afterwards in civil procedures but i can't imagine how it gives the man the right to ignore the order of crew and airport police to get off the plane.

I wouldn't even get too hung up on the "FAA regulated aircraft" portion of this, just in a general sense. You and I may have a contract that says you can use my property for a day, but then I might prevent you from doing so. This could be wildly inconvenient for you for various reasons. If I told you to leave, I wouldn't expect the cops to figure out who was right. I would expect the cops to err on the side of the property owner and make the obvious and expedient decision to evict you from my property.

The contract wouldn't even enter into it. If there's a grievance, then it should be handled later. The police aren't there to litigate that issue. They're there to resolve the immediate conflict.

Crucially, it doesn't matter that the contract is 100% in your favor. That's not what the police are there to discern.

Everybody is trying to play amateur aviation attorney, but this is really about understanding the role of police in resolving disputes like this one.

> Everybody is trying to play amateur ... attorney

Including you.

You're right that it's not the responsibility of police to determine all details of who's right and who's wrong, especially considering contracts that can take days for a trained contract lawyer to understand. They do have a responsibility to ensure that the person requesting removal is the owner of the property, and the person being removed is not a co-owner, but that's about as far as it goes.

However, that's not the only issue being discussed here. Just as we should get too hung up on the "FAA regulated aircraft" portion, we shouldn't get hung up on the "police role" portion either. The more important question is United/Republic's role. Were they in a position to require this passenger's removal, or was that breach of contract? What about the issues of crew logistics and voluntary-deboarding incentives? If you want to broaden the focus, let's broaden it all the way.

> i can't imagine how it gives the man the right to ignore the order of crew and airport police to get off the plane.

Neither 49USC§46501 nor 14CFR§91 applied at the time in question, according to applicable definitions (e.g. "crewmember" and "flight time") which anyone who presumes to interpret law can and should look up near the rules themselves. Absent either of those, the passenger had all the rights he would have in any other time and place. He had a contract establishing his right to be where he was. United/Republic had already recognized that right by allowing him to board in the first place. He had done nothing since to waive or nullify his rights under that contract. Thus, at that moment and under those circumstances, he was under no obligation to comply with the order that was given.

If they'd closed the doors, 49USC§46501 would apply. If they had left the gate, 14CFR§91 would. Those would have been different cases, but we're not here to discuss different cases. Anybody who wants to treat rules as sacrosanct should do so based on a full and accurate understanding of those rules.

Well then you worded it really badly. It reads as if you're a cheerleader for the police being corporate bully boys.

Given that the man was not handcuffed and indeed made his way back on to the plane, there are perhaps assumptions that can be made about how happy the officers were with the situation in general too (without resorting to any Nuremberg analogy).

Those weren't even police officers. I wonder why this can't be considered "assault", accordinly.

It will be.

My understanding is that they were police officers. Not Chicago city police officers, but rather the airport authority police officers.

They seem to hire people with law enforcement qualifications:

https://chicago.taleo.net/careersection/100/jobdetail.ftl?jo...

And I imagine they must have some sort of law enforcement authority.

Doesn't mean it wasn't illegal to do what they did though.

It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force.

This is correct and I believe it's by design.

Law enforcement officers are selected for high aggression and high intelligence is often/usually penalized in the screening process. In a lawsuit against New London CT, the courts found it legal to disqualify a candidate for being too smart.

I don't doubt it. It's not for nothing that the USA police is by large mocked around the world. Land of the free and home of the brave is quite ironic when it comes to USA police.

> The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.

I would argue that the unconscious paying customer with a bloody head paid the price.

Well, United stock went down, IIRC, $830 million dollars. That's paying a bit of a price. They may pay for it in lost sales and lawsuits, as well.

The cop got suspended. That's paying a price, too. And it may not be the end of the price he pays.

UAL is still up for the week. This is a normal fluctuation in the grand scheme of things, it isn't "payback" by any means.

Well yea, man. If UAL is so popular they have to drag people off the plane, they must be selling crazy tickets, right? And they probably have more room to raise prices than anticipated.

No. I only mean UAL hasn't been hit yet in pocket book about this. I agree that they should be.

The article says 1.6 billion. I suppose it matters when you take the measurement.

You make good points. Airplanes used to have jump seats, fold down seats, specifically for accommodating these sorts of crew transfers, so that they wouldn't interfere with normal passenger seating. I wonder if the jump seats were removed at some point in order to increase normal seating.

They still have those, but jump seat travel isn't considered safe by FAA regulations.

If you look in the /r/aviation threads you'll see various people who are airline crew claiming they can fly jumpseat but it's beneath them and they want their regular-seat privileges enforced at basically any cost.

Don't the jumpseats have more legroom? I thought the ones I'd seen did, just by not being part of the ordinary aisles and being smaller (slimmer back especially). I'd take a milking stool over the regular seats if it meant not having my knees jammed most of an inch into the seat in front of me (and I'm not even that tall).

Where is the cabin crew supposed to sit during take off and landing if the jump seats are occupied by others? Also, this wasn't a 737, but a smaller plane.

This sounds plausible, and fits with the incident if basically no one trusts the airline to negotiate in good faith. Employees assume that if they don't make a fuss about getting a seat, then they'll have to fly jump-seat or standing-room-only from then on out. Likewise, passengers don't trust the airline offer of $800 and the next flight out for giving up their seat. I would have taken that offer if I could be assured it was legit, but I'd have a strong suspicion they'd deduct the cost of the flight and the hotel and give me what's left in the form of Chili's gift cards or something.

With trust that low it was probably only a matter of time before a dispute escalated into unnecessary use of force.

It's worse than that, really. I've got people on reddit telling me that policy -- which they say I can only read if I FOIA it, maybe -- is that all disputes with passengers are supposed to immediately escalate to police as a first and only resort. Because "9/11", apparently.

I have definitely been on Delta flights in the last year where crew in transit used the jumpseats.

> run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time

Many (some? most? warning, weasel words) airports operate at capacity so just adding more flights might not have been possible even if they wanted to

See, for example, the fights going on at Love Field over gate space

Federal law governs contract of carriage. United was legally prohibited from removing anyone from that flight to make room for crew. Period.

They broke federal law by breaking their contract of carriage. I don't know what is so difficult to understand about that.

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