Originally Posted by IDIOTPILOT

The flight in question doesn't even fall under DOT reporting cause it's United Express by Republic. ExpressJet is one of the largest United Express operators, how many of those bumps were actually United customers.

Originally Posted by LNL76

So they don't ask for volunteers? Fascinating. I'm reaching out to friends who work there to get it straight.

Originally Posted by Andy

This is Trump world. There will be plenty of fresh news stories in the next week that eclipse this stale story to keep the SJWs busy. Just look how fast the Syrian nerve gas and tomahawk missile attack have moved off of page 1 - and that was only a week ago.

Originally Posted by CBreezy

I don't know what the do or don't do. I just know what the DOT is reporting.

Originally Posted by LNL76

I'll get back to you what I hear from a jetBlue crewmember, but again, never heard them ask for volunteers at any gate anywhere for the past 4 years I've commuted on them.

Originally Posted by CBreezy

I don't know why it matters what a jetblue pilot says.

Originally Posted by tom11011

Off the top of my head-

The first thing that comes to mind is once the doctor refused to leave, the entire airplane should have been deplaned. United has a duty to protect the other passengers as well. Then once this doctor saw the airplane wasn't going to depart, he may have just chose to leave voluntarily.

The second thing that comes to mind is once a person is boarded, they are boarded. How do you deny boarding to someone who has boarded.

The third thing is to continue to raise compensation levels to a level where somebody decides it makes sense to take the money and leave. This is fair, it gives the opportunity for the company to decide to compensate a very high dollar amount, or choose to not oversell (not in this case), or choose to deadhead a crew on a different flight. Everybody has options in this case. I just read that some passenger on Delta recently was compensated $12,000 for electing to skip a series of flights.

Fourth, don't oversell flights. Not all airlines do. Although in this situation I don't think it was oversold, just sold to capacity.

I suspect Congress may start looking at a Passenger's Bill of Rights V2

Originally Posted by Andy

Seriously? You might want to check with an actual lawyer on that one, Perry.

Originally Posted by RJSAviator76

Hate to disappoint, but I'm not alt-right, or a thug, or snowflake, nor do I throw tantrums when I don't get my way, or when elections don't go my way, but I digress. I do, however, follow the rules and read the fine print because I learned early on that fine print is what usually gets ya.

The sad part is that it escalated to this point. It wouldn't have if the passenger complied with a request to get off the plane and didn't make a scene. I am 99.9% sure that the ops agent and the supervisor both explained to the passenger what was going on. But just like us as pilots, these agents are also constrained by their manual and rules. When you have a non-compliant passenger refusing airline staff's instructions, you bring law enforcement to deal with said passenger. I am sure the law enforcement also explained to this passenger that he had to get off the plane before they physically pulled him off. It's sad and unfortunate.

The airline makes the rules and often times those rules are result of some legislation or regulation. We may not like them, but we have to follow them, or follow proper channels to change them.

The dignified and proper passenger response to this would have been to get off the plane and sort it out with the airline. If necessary, get the lawyers involved if that's what he felt was appropriate. However, throwing a tantrum, being unresponsive and uncooperative with agents, supervisors and ultimately law enforcement... what did he expect to happen?

My challenge to you fine folks is to ask yourself how would you handle this situation given the constraints of your manual/regulations. On one hand, this is a paying passenger who bought a regular ticket. On the other hand, you have an effectively an unruly passenger refusing to cooperate with airline staff in an overbooked situation to the point that he is causing a flight to be delayed, inconveniencing every other passenger on that flight and the subsequent flights with that airframe that day. What would you have done differently?