It looks like United have decided to make some policy changes as a result of the overbooking incident they had recently. That particular incident arose due to crew members needing to fly on an overbooked flight, United was unable to find volunteers (or unwilling to offer enough compensation to find volunteers), called security and as a result a passenger was knocked unconscious.
Point Me To The Plane has a leaked e-mail from United regarding the policy change, you can read their site for the full e-mail but the change is as follows:
- Effective immediately, Crew Scheduling is now only able to make must-ride deadhead bookings on oversold flights if it is 60 minutes or more before the estimate time of departure.
This is a common sense change and something other airlines should adopt if they don’t have similar rules in place already. Involuntarily bumping a passenger that has already boarded for crew is nonsensical (as was United’s initial response to this saga). Delta recently increased their voluntary bumping policy to a maximum of $9,950, it’ll be interesting to see if United makes additional changes to their policies or not.
