United Airlines is public enemy No. 1 this week following their very public ejection of a passenger from one of their flights. Social media even went through the trouble of thinking up tongue-in-cheek ad slogans for the company, and it's going to take some time for United to be associated with anything other than a screaming man being dragged off their plane.
The worst part of all (beyond the obvious, anyway) is their massive mistake might not have even been legal. Though the initial buzz surrounding the flight claimed it was "overbooked", it has since been revealed that's not technically accurate. Since coming under fire for the fiasco in Chicago, United has changed what they've claimed about the flight several times, and the airline is no longer referring to it as "overbooked" or "oversold".
This may seem like a semantics issue, but the phrasing and designation is important. An overbooked flight means a company sold tickets at a volume higher than the number of seats available, and if that wasn't the case for their flight out of Chicago, there was no impetus for the company to remove Dr. Dao from his seat.
The law on this is fairly clear and reads as follows: "In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily." United did not and could not do this if the flight wasn't overbooked in the first place, and instead attempted to give away seats of paying customers to their flight staff, which violates that law.
The irony here is that United likely backed away from their stance on calling the flight "overbooked" because overbooking flights is a practice that reflects poorly on the company and frustrates consumers. Nobody wants to buy a ticket for a flight thinking they'll get bumped, so airlines have incentive to downplay that practice. But in their effort to make themselves look better to a wider base of consumers who might still consider booking with the airline, United may have damaged themselves legally and exposed the airline to a greater lawsuit threat from Dao.
United can't figure out how to put out this fire, and they only seem to make things worse with each passing day.
