The Internet is abuzz today with a story about someone who was involuntarily taken off a United flight — quite literally dragged off screaming, with his belly button showing and all — because it was overbooked.
He didn’t go with much dignity, but he had a right to be upset about it. The airline, after all, was the one that overbooked the flight. It wasn’t his fault.
At least this guy’s wallet is going to be a bit fatter. Believe it or not, there’s actually a federal regulation on the compensation an airline must pay you when you’re involuntarily deplaned. I discovered this over a year ago when it happened to me on a Southwest flight out of Dulles.
I didn’t go kicking and screaming. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I came about as close to volunteering as you’re legally allowed to for something involuntary.
I wanted to be on my Friday evening flight to meet up with my wife and kids out West, but the plane (the last flight I could catch that day) was, naturally, overbooked by two people. Nobody wanted off, and nobody (including myself) was interested in the offer of a travel voucher.
But I went to the gate attendant and said that even though I wasn’t volunteering, I wouldn’t kick and scream if I had to be involuntarily forced to catch a flight the following morning. So once they’d double-checked and the plane was definitely too full, they chose me and then someone else at random. The other guy was not happy about it at all, but I was pleased. They handed me a voucher for free rides back in from Dulles that night and then out to BWI the following day, and they wrote me a check on the spot for twice what I’d paid for my flight.
That seemed pretty good, but then about a week later, they realized they’d made a mistake. They actually owed me twice as much again, they explained in a letter, and so they cut me another check. Altogether I was about $1,200 better off for the experience. At this point, I started thinking about becoming a professional airline passenger.
I didn’t understand why they had decided to be so generous, but it turns out this was required under federal regulations, which read (in part) as follows on the subject of involuntarily deplaned passengers:
(2) Compensation shall be 200% of the fare to the passenger’s destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $675, if the carrier offers alternate transportation that, at the time the arrangement is made, is planned to arrive at the airport of the passenger’s first stopover, or if none, the airport of the passenger’s final destination more than one hour but less than two hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger’s original flight; and
(3) Compensation shall be 400% of the fare to the passenger’s destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $1,350, if the carrier does not offer alternate transportation that, at the time the arrangement is made, is planned to arrive at the airport of the passenger’s first stopover, or if none, the airport of the passenger’s final destination less than two hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger’s original flight.
I fell into that latter category, so this was quite a good deal for me. But what if no one with my flexibility had been booked on that flight? Nobody likes a scene. In the end, this regulation probably helps the carriers too much by keeping the cost of overbooking a plane artificially low. In some rare cases, $1,375 might not seem like a fair price for anyone on the plane.
In our modern world, there’s no reason they couldn’t, say, create an app to determine a fair market price for deplaning yourself voluntarily. I believe that at least one airline — Delta, if I’m not mistaken — asks or used to ask you to bid in advance when you check in on what you’d theoretically accept as compensation for being bumped. (It’s non-binding, but at least then they don’t have to choose people at random.) This would at least allow an airline to avoid an undignified scene, and damage to your company, like the incident that’s gone viral today.
