Apparently united position is that you haven't "boarded" until the door has closed and plane has left the gate
Based on http://www.askthepilot.com/how-to-speak-airline/ it seems like "boarding" means to enter the plane.
> One might argue that Dao had not completed “boarding” until the cabin door was closed. This argument would be wrong. The term “boarding” is not defined in the definition section of the contract, and absent an explicit definition in the contract, terms are to be afforded their plain meaning. “Boarding” means that the passenger presents a boarding pass to the gate agent who accepts or scans the pass and permits entry through the gate to the airplane, allowing the passenger to enter the aircraft and take a seat.
> It is possible in this regard to distinguish between the collective completion of the plane’s boarding process, which is not complete until all passengers have boarded and the cabin door is closed. But that is different from each passenger’s boarding, which is complete for each individual once he or she has been accepted for transportation by the gate agent and proceeded to the aircraft and taken his or her assigned seat.
This was all on Asian airlines. My few experiences on United have been terrible.
So in this case I'd say the regulations guiding airlines is fair. United's execution of these regulations is the problem. There are a million things United could have done in the chain of events to have avoided facing a PR backlash. As this is HN, I'd give a simple technical solution that would have avoided this whole problem:
The computer could have deboarded 8 passangers at random from order of lowest priority. United could have explained that if their employees don't catch this flight another flight with XXX passengers will be delayed / cancelled. This would allow the supervisor to use their own discretion to allow 4 of the 8 passengers to reboard.
Making the practice of "overselling" illegal is not the solution. There are times where problem could be cause by equipment swaps changing seat numbers. If we stop the airlines from overselling then travelling will become a lot more expensive.
Come'on this is hacker news. I am sure most here have seen the mainframe based applications that entirely control every aspect of airline industry.
These things were coded by professionals over 30 years ago. Its not like these flights are being managed by some buggy wordpress plugin made by some offshore developer.
Your solution just has the airline crew going, "Fair enough, sir, you can stay" and then calling the next name. At that point, the next person knows that refusing is allowed, so he does too. Pretty quickly, you're absolutely going to be on a flight where five of the eight refuse, and now you're back to bludgeoning elderly asian people. And at some point, the whole system becomes public knowledge, and you now add the element of fights between passengers because we all know that only four of us get to refuse.
Or you just eject all eight of them and four can later reboard. Again, what if one or more refuse.
There is a solution in place already. United just didn't choose to employ it. United offered vouchers to anyone who wanted to voluntarily give up their seats. They reportedly bumped the offer one time. They didn't bump it enough. There's your solution. I promise you everyone on that plane had a price. You can find four people who'll take say $2000 to miss a flight to fucking Louisville. Does United think $2000 is too much? I guess so, but at that point, United has a problem that can be solved by effectively buying back some seats, and sellers get to set the price they'll take. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper to have paid them.
You inform the refusenik that he is trespassing; if he continues to refuse to leave, you inform him that police will be waiting for him at his destination, then call out the fifth name on the list. When you arrive at the destination, he goes to jail, while the four bumped passengers get vouchers and fly later.
Given how cheap flying is by historical standards, I wouldn't mind that.