Yes, but in this case I think it was a fairly thinly veiled attempt to avoid paying the penalties for not boarding passengers prescribed by the DOT and most airlines contracts of carriage.
If you are denied boarding and it's not due to something outside of the airline's control like weather, they are responsible for getting you to your destination, including booking a flight with another airline at their expense if necessary, or putting you on a later flight and paying for food and accommodations as well as a penalty based on the value of your ticket and the time difference between your original scheduled arrival and when they actually get you there. Vomit covered seats is a maintenance issue and would fall under this provision.
This is why when a flight is overbooked you see the airline offer sometimes over $1,000 in flight credits to people willing to volunteer to take a later flight. If no one volunteers and the airline has to officially bump you against your will, they're responsible for all of the above and the payment to you is in cash, not a credit to be used with them.
By threatening the passengers with being removed by security, the pilot abused his authority in an attempt to either trick the passengers into "voluntarily" giving up their seats and forfeiting their rights or falsely turn it into a security issue in an attempt to exempt the airline from paying the penalties.
Luckily they've got other passengers as witnesses to vouch that they weren't doing anything disruptive that would merit being removed as a security issue.
Had they filmed it they'd be in an even better position, and if they had known their rights under DOT regulations and the contract of carriage and asserted them and accused the pilot of attempting to subvert them by creating a fake security issue on film it would have been even better.
By threatening the passengers with being removed by security, the pilot abused his authority in an attempt to either trick the passengers into "voluntarily" giving up their seats and forfeiting their rights or falsely turn it into a security issue in an attempt to exempt the airline from paying the penalties.
But enough about Covid policies.
It is surprising we don't hear about these types of situations more, but from my experience people are always willing to take the credits without much fuss. Likely because they see big numbers and don't know that the alternative is so much more lucrative.
Yes, but in this case I think it was a fairly thinly veiled attempt to avoid paying the penalties for not boarding passengers prescribed by the DOT and most airlines contracts of carriage.
If you are denied boarding and it's not due to something outside of the airline's control like weather, they are responsible for getting you to your destination, including booking a flight with another airline at their expense if necessary, or putting you on a later flight and paying for food and accommodations as well as a penalty based on the value of your ticket and the time difference between your original scheduled arrival and when they actually get you there. Vomit covered seats is a maintenance issue and would fall under this provision.
This is why when a flight is overbooked you see the airline offer sometimes over $1,000 in flight credits to people willing to volunteer to take a later flight. If no one volunteers and the airline has to officially bump you against your will, they're responsible for all of the above and the payment to you is in cash, not a credit to be used with them.
By threatening the passengers with being removed by security, the pilot abused his authority in an attempt to either trick the passengers into "voluntarily" giving up their seats and forfeiting their rights or falsely turn it into a security issue in an attempt to exempt the airline from paying the penalties.
Luckily they've got other passengers as witnesses to vouch that they weren't doing anything disruptive that would merit being removed as a security issue.
Had they filmed it they'd be in an even better position, and if they had known their rights under DOT regulations and the contract of carriage and asserted them and accused the pilot of attempting to subvert them by creating a fake security issue on film it would have been even better.
But enough about Covid policies.
It is surprising we don't hear about these types of situations more, but from my experience people are always willing to take the credits without much fuss. Likely because they see big numbers and don't know that the alternative is so much more lucrative.