United Attempted to Throw Another Passenger Off
Days after Sunday’s footage of Dr. David Dao being forcibly dragged off a United flight went viral and provoked national outrage, Geoff Fearns shared his alleged experience of being asked to get off a United flight last week. Though Fearns’s encounter with airline officials was much less disturbing than Dao's, it still couldn’t come at a worse time for the company - their market value continues to drop in the wake of the incident.
Fearns told the L.A. Times he paid $1,000 for a first-class ticket back from Kuai to Los Angeles as he had to unexpectedly get back for work earlier than originally thought. A while after settling in to his seat, he said a United employee hurried onto the plane and told him he had to get off as the flight was overbooked and “they needed the seat for somebody more important who came at the last minute. They said they have a priority list and this other person was higher on the list than me.”
The conversation allegedly heated up quickly with the employee telling Fearns he “had no choice. They said they’d put me in cuffs if they had to.” He also told CBS Los Angeles the employee also allegedly threatened to call the police. That’s where Fearns’s and Dao’s stories differed: Fearns never seemed to be in danger of physical abuse and was eventually put in an economy middle seat between a married couple who were fighting and refused to sit next to each other (“They argued the whole way back. Nearly six hours. It was a lot of fun.”).
Fearns, who is the president of TriPacific Captial Advisors, later asked United for a full refund for the flight and for a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice (“This is how rich guys do it,” Times writer David Lazarus notes). The airline agreed to give him the $500 difference between his first-class and economy tickets, and shut down his request for a charitable donation. They’ve not yet responded to allegations of this particular incident.
United’s CEO Oscar Munoz faced backlash Monday for his initial response to Dao’s incident in which he defended his employees. He later apologized.
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