Recently, an overbooking occurred in a plane that was on its way to Louisville from Chicago. This accident took place because of the fault of United Airlines. Overbooking means that there are additional passengers on a plane when the plane is already full. The airline’s decision in this situation was to pick four passengers randomly and force them to leave the plane. One of the chosen four was a doctor who refused to get off the plane because there was a patient waiting for him in Louisville. However, the airline used physical violence to get the doctor off the plane, which was recorded by other passengers who were in the plane. As soon as the video went viral in the media, it grabbed a lot of attention internationally. Moreover, because of the fact that the doctor was a Vietnamese-American and three of the chosen four were Asians, the controversy of racism arose. From this event, many people started boycotting the airline, and they began a signature-seeking campaign which gathered momentum and forced the CEO of United Airlines, Oscar Munoz, to resign.
  Another similar event took place at Delta Airlines. The event was that a flight attendant misunderstood the regulations and forced a family of passengers to get off the plane due to a car seat for a 2-year old baby. The whole situation was also recorded and released on YouTube.
  Jung Jin-young, a student of the School of Business, said, “When people use airplanes, they are usually on vacation or business, and when these passengers experience such bad service, it most likely will remain a terrible memory for them. Therefore, if the airlines try to guarantee the passengers’ rights and services, it will remain as a good experience in the passengers’ memories and will be the best marketing strategy for the airlines.”
  When we look into the regulations about overbooking, the airlines do not take reservations in accordance with the number of seats. This is because there may be a situation where a passenger who already made a reservation could experience unexpected difficulty in getting a visa. As a result, the passenger wouldn’t be able to get aboard the airplane. Then, it will be a loss for the airline. The funny thing is that if the economy seats are fully reserved and there are some leftover seats in business class, sometimes the passengers who booked economy seats seat can get an upgrade. However, when both the economy seats and business seats are overbooked, the airline suggests that some of the passengers give up their seats on the airplane by providing compensation to them, like free flight tickets. For this reason, sometimes they tend to insist that they can   follow their own regulations and avoid their responsibility in creating a dilemma.
  However, in addition to the aforementioned events related to overbooking, airlines’ using excessive force also has raised a big controversy. Because of the delays of the airplanes, passengers at New York’s JFK airport were trapped in their planes for 11 hours and then just had to return to the terminal on February 14, 2007. After this event, the passengers, a consumer organization, and the Legislatures have tried to recover passengers’ rights, and the New York State Legislature enacted a law called the Passenger Bill of Rights. As these kinds of accidents have continued to occur, the US government had a debate on strengthening the Passenger Bill of Rights, which was passed in 2008. However, it was denied by the court because it was kind of an infringement upon airlines’ rights.
  When it comes to these problems, Kim Seo-yong, who is working for a tour company named Yellow Balloon as a manager of travel packages and airline ticket sales, said, “Recently, I have been asked  questions about travel packages many times, and the number of people who want to check which airline they will fly has been increasing rapidly. I think this situation is a result of some recent events caused by the excessive force of airlines. In contrast with the aforementioned accidents, there were some incidents in Korea as well, such as a drunken passenger who used violence against a flight attendant. Therefore, if the airlines and the passengers respect each other, then these kinds of incidents will decrease and the flights will be enjoyable.”

By Park Joo-hyun
jh38@cbnu.ac.kr