United Airlines apologized on Tuesday and said it would review its policies after videos showed a passenger being forcibly removed from a full plane to make room for its own employees, setting off public outrage, reports The New York Times.
Oscar Munoz, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement that United would take “full responsibility” for the situation and that “no one should ever be mistreated this way.”
He committed to making changes to ensure that the situation would not repeat itself, adding that United would conduct “a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement.”
The company said it will communicate the results of its review by the end of the month.
The videos cast a sharp focus on airline overbooking, as travelers, already dealing with the myriad indignities of flying, realized they could be physically ejected from a seat they had booked and paid for in advance.
Airlines can bump passengers from flights for a number of reasons, including favoring passengers who paid a higher fare or customers who have frequent-flier status. The reasons that four passengers in particular were bumped on the United flight on Sunday remain unclear. The airline said it needed seats to get its own employees to Louisville, Ky.
Videos of the episode, in which one passenger was dragged along the floor on an airplane, spread quickly online. The Transportation Department is investigating whether the airline complied with federal rules on overbooking.
Suddenly, all around the country, airline passengers have begun to realize that, even if they are sitting in a seat, holding a ticket and quietly scanning the in-flight magazine for movie choices, they can still get kicked off. Fairly randomly, it seems.
Airlines often overbook flights, but it is rare to be denied boarding. Among airlines based in the United States, about 62 per one million passengers were denied boarding last year, according to the Department of Transportation. United was in the middle of the pack, ranked No. 5, with 3,765 passengers involuntarily denied boarding out of more than 86 million who were allowed on an airplane, according to the Transportation Department. (An additional 62,895 did not board, but on a voluntary basis.)
Experts say airlines routinely study data to see which flights are most likely to have no-shows. Then they sell more tickets than seats on the plane, expecting several people not to show up, a strategy that ensures a full plane and maximizes profit. When there are not enough no-shows, airlines will begin offering bribes — rewards usually in the form of travel vouchers, gift cards or even cash — in the hopes that flexible customers will take the reward and reschedule their flight.
For the truly flexible traveler, the system can be manipulated to their advantage, travel experts say.
“There are people who fly around the world on credits they got from giving up their airline seats,” said Seth Kaplan, managing partner at Airline Weekly, an industry publication.
Typically, airlines began bargaining with passengers at the gate, offering travel vouchers of $400 to $600, at first. In the United States, compensation maxes out at $1,350, but experts say the reward offers rarely go that high.
