Last week, a United Airlines flight from Burlington to Washington, D.C. was deemed too heavy to fly, so the company had to decide who to boot off. In a moment of what was almost certainly accidental honesty, they targeted the 20 least profitable customers. We know this was their criteria because they announced it to the rest of the passengers, so those who remained were able to rest easy knowing that all the cheapskates, budget travelers and poor people were gone.
One of the passengers on the flight was Bruce Poon Tip, who tweeted about it as it happened:
United Airlines Service. Just announced they have a weight problem and have to remove 20 ppl in order of how much you paid for your ticket!
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So uncomfortable with United Airlines removing families and older couples who bought cheap tickets. Sad frankly.
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It’s funny, there is no anger really. People are embarrassed. [The gate agent] has announced that you will be thrown off based on how much u paid.
Although it’s probably not the end of the world to have your bargain-hunting skills revealed to strangers, it seems like it would make more sense from a customer service perspective to select passengers randomly, or to use some criteria that in no way reflects on the passengers personally–like random selection, or the last n passengers to board.
United responded to Tip that same day via Twitter and acknowledged that going by ticket price was uncool:
What airport and what gate? We’ll look into this. @brucepoontip
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This shouldn’t have happened. We are locating the correct station and gate no. and will address the issue today.
As of today, however, the airline hasn’t posted any follow up item on their Twitter feed. United also hasn’t said whether what “shouldn’t have happened” was the use of ticket price to select passengers, or the fact that the removal criteria was announced publicly.
“United Flight Kicks Off Passengers Who Paid Least for Tickets” [Jaunted via This or That] (Thanks to sgmaxx!)
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Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Telling people that was what they were doing wasn’t so smart, but dropping the lowest-revenue customers is a perfectly reasonable way to do it. If I were doing the algorithm, I’d probably factor in customer status as well, so I don’t bump a high-status frequent flier who happens to be on a cheap ticket, but other than that, this makes complete sense.
If the plane was overweight, give fatties like me or Kevin Smith the bump – and the free ticket!
Likely reason United hasn’t Twitter-responded is that THIS ISN’T A UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT! It was Atlantic Southeast from Burlington, Vermont – an airport with NO United mainline service or employees.
I know we all *love* to beat up on the airlines, but in this case the original poster is a company in the travel business with an ax to grind. Passengers were offloaded to make this flight safe, due to heavy weather on the east coast.
I vote for safety anytime!
This is something like what happens when you book hotel reservations on the discount sites; they get the worst service. If you have a problem at a hotel and they see you are a discount customer, they are not all that willing to help you.
Not to dismiss that the way United bumped passengers off their flights but there could be a number of reasons why the aircraft was weight restricted that day. I work as an aircraft dispatcher for a large airline and currently Burlington is undergoing a construction project on their main runway which reduces the performance on any aircraft operating out of there right now. Most days you can still take all the passengers but if there is weather at the destination or air traffic congestion getting into Dulles then perhaps the additional fuel was needed. There may be other factors as to why the aircraft was overweight for takeoff other than overselling the flight. The operations agents in Burlington definitely could have worded things a bit differently in dealing with getting passengers off the plane.
I wonder how low is low. When I purchase airline tickets, I don’t have a choice what to pay for my coach tickets. Not really. For example, I’m researching airline tickets between Minneapolis and Los Angeles (LAX). On all the aggregators, the lowest price ticket is $318 (which is round trip). All the other airfares hover around this price. This happens to be the same price as I’d pay on the airline’s web site. I suppose I could be lucky and hit a super saver sale and pay less, but there is no option for me to pay $350 to be safe from being booted.
Shouldn’t it be people who purchased their tickets the latest get kicked off?
This has happened to me on a Delta Connections (ASA) flight out of NW Florida before. At first the gate agent came onboard the plane (after everyone had boarded) and asked for volunteers after they had determined that the aircraft was over its weight/balance restrictions. Then she flat out said that if they didn’t have enough volunteers, they would pull passengers off of the plane based upon fare class (i.e. lower/cheaper fare code would get pulled off first). She did get a few volunteers, and they did get the cash incentive, but then she did have to start calling off names over the P.A. of passengers who needed to involuntarily disembark. One of the weirdest situations that I’ve seen in my many days of travel. I think the involuntarily pulled get a higher incentive? Maybe they made out in the end reimbursement-wise despite their delay in travel time?
Our company gets special negotiated (gov’t agency) rates – like I just booked an international ticket for about $700, where the published fare would have been $3000. However, the system doesn’t show the special discounted fare, it only shows that the ticket is a XYZ class ticket (XYZ isn’t the real class, I forgot what it is). So if my boss was on this flight, would he have gotten bumped because he paid so little, or would he be safe?
I only found this out because our travel agent told me that if my boss wants to upgrade, he shouldn’t mention he paid a special rate (since the difference between what he paid and what the ticket cost was so large).
I think they should base it off of last-checked-in, particularly those who cut it real close. If you can’t be bothered to make it to the airport early enough, you can catch the next flight. The only thing i can think of is that what if there are people from connecting flights? Would they have counted as checking in late, or are they already “checked in” when they check in for their first leg?
This isn’t new. I was repeatedly bumped for 9 hours in O’Hare, watching my name sink lower and lower on the stand-by list as the day went by. It was the first time I’d bought a ticket through Priceline because it was short-notice trip, and I have no doubt the fact that I paid significantly less played a part in it.
My dad used to travel a lot. He did stand by lots when he could just because it could mean being home 24+ hours earlier.
Once he got the last seat on a plane and someone else was apparently willing to pay top dollar for the ticket that he paid nothing for as stand by. After he got on the plane, they approached him and asked to see his ticket. Standing behind him was the only passenger not yet seated with a carry on bag. My dad handed them the ticket and the guy that was still standing looked kind of stuck up, like he was expecting to get the seat (I imagine a less-traveled would have not realized what was happening and rolled). They then told my dad there was some kind of error with the ticket and they’d have to take him back out to the gate to clear it. He asked to see the ticket again, and went “Nope, nothing wrong here”, and then buckled his seat belt. They did a bit of back and forth about how there was surely an error he just couldn’t see it. After they held the plane up for about 15 minutes, they finally gave up and walked the, now rather PO’d, guy off the plane.
That’s how you avoid that and how you subtly tell them to shove it, lol.
Did they ask for volunteers first, I wonder? They could compensate them, like with upgrades? Oh, wait, that would cost them money. Nevermind.
I know this is a dead thread–but interestingly enough this is NOT just the profit-squeezers at the airline that want this type of behavior.
I have a relative who had a late evening flight delayed due to a mechanical failure, they told them it could be over 6 hours delay with a chance the flight could be canceled if the repair went past midnight. They were given a choice: Rebook on an AM flight and get a free hotel room, or wait for the plane repair and possibly end up in the hotel / flight next day anyway if the repair goes too long.
As it turned out there was another flight leaving the same destination an hour later, they were putting people on standby for that flight as well.
Being a member of the elite-platinum-gold-admirals club, and a first class ticket holder, he demanded that they bump someone from that later flight and put him in their place… and guess what… they did…
They want money, and people who pay a lot want to be treated special… it’s a match made in heaven… and if you’re the lowest price ticket chances are good you will go with the lowest cost ticket, even if you had a bad previous experience.
They should have removed the fattest people first. Would have made the plane weigh less so they could leave on time
this happened with my wife and I on a United flight last year. They also clearly stated the criteria, which was:
those with immediate connecting flights get on the flight, any 1K frequent flyers, and then those that paid the most for their tickets.
They ended up kicking off 10 to 15 people because a “smaller” plane than expected had been given to them by accident for our quick 30 minute flight.