United Airlines threatens to deplane entire flight to get Business Class passengers to give up their seats for flight attendants

United Airlines allegedly threatened to deplane an entire flight as it sought to convince passengers in its Polaris Business Class cabin on a flight from Los Angeles to London to give up their seats for flight attendants because the onboard crew bunk facilities were out of order.

The incident occurred on Sunday evening as United flight UA923, operated by a nine-year-old Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, was preparing to depart for the overnight transatlantic crossing to England.

Here’s a new one— if we don’t get volunteers, we will deplane
byu/Dokindo inunitedairlines

According to one of the passengers onboard the flight, gate agents informed everyone onboard that the crew bunk facilities were out of order and despite attempts by maintenance personnel to fix the issue, the bunks were still unservicable.

With a flight time of more than ten hours, both FAA regulations and the United flight attendant contract, require crew members to be able to get some rest during the flight to ensure they are not fatigued during critical phases of flight like coming into land.

It’s not known why the crew bunks were out of order, although typical issues include problems with the heating or lighting, as well as the emergency oxygen supply.

Instead of canceling a flight, airlines will then typically block out seats in a Business Class cabin with fully lay-flat seats so that flight attendants can get ‘horizontal’ rest as required by their contract.

On Sunday evening, however, there weren’t enough seats available in the Polaris cabin so United was forced to find three volunteers willing to downgrade themselves to Economy Plus.

By the point, that engineers had tried and failed to fix the issue in the crew bunks, passengers had already boarded the plane so gate agents boarded the aircraft and initially offered $1,500 and 75,000 MileagePlus frequent flyer miles.

None of the passengers were willing to accept that offer, so the gate agents warned that the entire plane might be deplaned if they couldn’t find any volunteers.

They then upped their offer to $2,500 in compensation, at which point, three volunteers were found to give up their seats in Business Class, and in the end, flight UA923 took off less than an hour late.

Technically, United didn’t need to find volunteers to voluntarily downgrade themselves, although airlines are reluctant to use these powers after the infamous Dr David Dao incident in 2018.

In that incident, Dr Dao was left bruised and battered when security agents dragged him off a United plane at Chicago O’Hare in order to make way for deadheading flight attendants.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) sets out rules for how and when airlines can involuntarily bump or downgrade passengers, and in most cases, once a passenger has already boarded a flight, then airlines can’t then involuntarily bump them.

There are, however, some exceptions, including for safety or security reasons, as well as if the passenger is being unruly.

In the case of flight UA923, United would be able to argue that the downgrades were necessary for safety reasons because the flight attendants would need the opportunity to get some much-needed rest on the flight.

When involuntarily downgraded on the same flight, passengers aren’t entitled to compensation, but airlines must refund the fare difference between the higher and lower class of travel.