re: #362 Big Beautiful Door

The good news for United flyers is that from now on, in order to avoid future debacles like this, if United asks for volunteers to be bumped all they have to do is sit back and wait for the cash offer to go up to the federal maximum of $1,350.

from an article in www.slate.com:

United’s original mistake came when airline staff let the passengers board and then tried to deal with the overbooking problem. Typically, Hobart told me, United does try to avoid boarding in such situations, though he characterized this as a standard procedure, “not a policy.” In the terminal, the airline wouldn’t have enjoyed the same degree of autocratic license, and it wouldn’t have been necessary to physically remove the passenger from the plane.

So I can well imagine disciplinary measures for the ground crew that let them board a plane that was overbooked.

Because, as the article points out “Airlines are authoritarian in structure”. I understand that when it comes to passenger safety in flight and transit, but not to commercial considerations (the need to ferry flight crew to another destination)