It was NOT an overbooked flight - lawyer explains

[DanTex]

19. There were no safety considerations here.

There's a huge difference between bumping people because the plane is unsafe to fly versus bumping people because the airline wants to move some of its people to a different location.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I can only imagine that whatever rules govern "ordinary" bumping, there are going to be exceptions when it comes to the safety of the aircraft.

And this is not even a case of overbooking. What happened here was that UA wanted to move some of its crew to another airport for its own business reasons. Those crew were not "must carry", and the airline could have transported all ticketed passengers if it wanted to. It decided to inconvenience passengers instead of inconveniencing itself.

The other thing is, if UA was willing to spend enough money, they could have avoided this whole thing. One option, for example, is to charter a private flight for those crew members. Or charter another private flight from another airport to get other crew members there. Or even offering people $50K to voluntarily give up their seats. I mean, if it were really critical to have those crew members transported, $200K is nothing to a company the size of UA.

But they didn't do that. In effect, they kicked four people off the plane because it was profitable for them.

Is that legal? I have no idea. Maybe there is fine print saying that they can kick anyone off the plane for whatever reason.

But the analogy with the safety problems is off base.