United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz has apologized after a video posted on Facebook late Sunday showed a passenger on an overbooked flight being forcibly removed from the plane before takeoff at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
As USA Today reports, air travelers surprisingly have few rights when airlines overbook their flights. Federal regulations do not prevent carriers from selling more seats than a flight can accommodate, a practice the airline industry says allows carriers to try to fill planes despite the number of no-shows that they can expect on any given flight.
Typically, airlines will ask for volunteers on oversold flights, promising some sort of compensation in return for taking a different flight. If few volunteer, carriers typically will keep increasing their offers until enough fliers agree to take another flight.
If not enough volunteers are found, the airline has the power to decide who gets “bumped” off the flight. Carriers spell this out in the “contract of carriage” that customers are bound to when they buy their tickets. But few fliers ever read that fine print, and such contracts don’t always specify a clear order for such situations.
