United Airlines Threatens Passengers: Give Up Business Class Seats To Flight Attendants Or Entire Flight Gets Kicked Off – View from the Wing

United Airlines Threatens Passengers: Give Up Business Class Seats To Flight Attendants Or Entire Flight Gets Kicked Off

by Gary Leff on September 23, 2024

United Airlines reportedly threatened to force everyone on their flight 923 from Los Angeles to London to get off the aircraft on Sunday, unless three business class passengers gave up their seats and moved to extra legroom coach in order to make room for flight attendants. A passenger says that this “came across as a threat, both in their wording and tone.”

United Airlines Business Class Cabin

Apparently, crew rest seats on the aircraft were inoperative and so the airline needed to assign business class seats for this purpose. Since the flight is ten and a half hours long, government regulations require dedicated crew rest.

Since the business cabin was full, they needed three volunteers. But if nobody was going to volunteer, the airline would pick passengers to downgrade. And since they don’t physically remove customers from the aircraft once seated (based on corporate scarring after the David Dao dragging incident in 2017, and the FAA regulations that followed), they would require everyone to get off the plane and re-board the aircraft.

The airline offered $1,500 in travel credits plus 75,000 miles for the inconvenience, but they didn’t have takers, and so they upped the travel credit offer to $2,500 which was enough to find three volunteers. The flight left 44 minutes late because of the ordeal.

Boeing 787 Crew Rest

Boeing 787 Crew Rest

Another United passenger shared that the same thing happened to their flight departing India. This time it was weight and balance, where the first seven rows of passengers in business class were forced to move to coach.

• Only middle seats were available
• The whole thing had to be accomplished in 20 minutes, before crew timed out
• So they didn’t take volunteers, and wouldn’t allow swapping

There were passengers, such as the one sharing what happened, who were happy to take the $2,500 compensation, but they were seated in the 8th row and not eligible. Since some of the passengers in the first 7 rows, “were already in their pajamas, watching movies” they were “livid and the whole thing fell apart.” It took more than the allotted 20 minutes, and the flight cancelled – for the second day in a row.

Another passenger shares volunteering to downgrade for $2,000, and a return of their friend’s PlusPoints which were used to upgrade from coach to business class.

The money comes in the form of travel credit, good for a year, which I used to visit my family. I left my spouse sitting in Polaris, and he gave me his amenity kit. We were both happy.

For some, $2,000 or more in travel vouchers is like a lottery win. For others it’s an absurd slap in the face – they bought the premium cabin seat to relax comfortably on the long flight, and they’re not getting what they paid for. It would take orders or magnitude more than that to ‘make it right’.

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