United Airlines to offer $10,000 to passengers asked to give up seats

United Airlines to offer up to $10,000 to passengers forfeiting seats
Reuters
Rashid Razaq27 April 2017

United Airlines has pledged to increase maximum compensation for passengers asked to give up seats on overbooked flights to $10,000 (£7,760) and give staff extra training in response to the negative backlash after a passenger was violently dragged from his seat.

The US carrier also promised to reduce, but not eliminate, overbooking - the selling of more tickets than there are seats on the plane.

The airline made the promises as it released a report detailing mistakes that led to the April 9 incident on a United Express plane in Chicago.

United did not say if ticket sales have dropped since the removal of Dr David Dao, 69, by three airport security officers, but the airline’s CEO Oscar Munoz said it had been damaging.

Mr Munoz said: “I breached public trust with this event and how we responded. People are upset, and I suspect that there are a lot of people potentially thinking of not flying us.”

United had already announced that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked flights and will require airline crews travelling for work to check in sooner.

Mr Munoz apologised again for the removal and his own initial response, in which he defended airline employees and called Dr Dao belligerent.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT