United Airlines Accused of Faking Unruly Passengers to Solve Newark Business Class Overbooking Crisis

United Airlines Accused of Faking Unruly Passengers to Solve Newark Business Class Overbooking Crisis

By Gary Leff May 29, 2024

Friday’s United Airlines flights from Newark to Dubrovnik were reportedly sold out in business class. United typically does not sell more business class tickets than there are seats, and it does not appear that the plane will be converted to one with a smaller business class cabin.

No one would accept the airline’s generous compensation offer even though ”

Unsure who would be flying – although they probably weren’t passengers without assigned seats – gate agents “said only (coach) and (premium economy) passengers could board.”

One passenger on the flight “heard gate agents planning to call a supervisor to resolve the problem by picking up the unruly passengers.”

There was no unruly behavior. Indeed, shortly afterwards, as boarding was still in progress with all the Y and W cabins already on board, the couple expressed their annoyance at having paid a lot of money for an unnecessarily delayed holiday, which was then backed up by the older woman.

He is not aggressive, unruly or physical – this assessment is confirmed by many other passengers. Indeed, the gate agents found them unruly and discharged them. The older woman’s husband, of course, refused to fly, which explains why the fight ended 32/34. Probably one of them was crew rest.

On the one hand, this story about port agents producing unruly passengers to unload them and fly them off makes no sense.

• They could involuntarily deny passengers boarding and owe a maximum of $1,550 per passenger
• It’s not the agent’s money, so what’s the incentive anyway?
• Involuntary denied boarding is no more difficult than dealing with unruly passenger reports.

On the other hand, it does excellent feel: This is Newark. Still, while yelling at a passenger seems entirely plausible in this case, I don’t think the workers in Newark want to go out of their way to get much work done? And being rude to passengers so that passengers will react aggressively kicking these passengers off the flight without compensation just seems like a lot of work with little personal benefit.

The witness at the gate doesn’t think anything like that happened, so I’ll bet the agents do kidding that passengers were being unruly and were kicked off while solving the overbooking problem, and then it so happened that the passengers actually reacted aggressively about the overbooking (perhaps the agents themselves reacted aggressively by kicking them off the flight).

More from the view from the wing