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The
airline uses offers to encourage volunteers to deboard a plane
and had 16 volunteers for each passenger who had to be
involuntarily denied boarding, Munoz said in the letter to the
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee late on Wednesday. (http://bit.ly/2q9YCjH)
Last year, United involuntarily denied boarding to 3,765
customers across more than 86.8 million mainline passengers in
the airline, Munoz said.
The airline had a Thursday deadline from the committee to answer
detailed questions about the incident on United Flight 3411,
from which 69-year-old Vietnamese-American doctor David Dao was
dragged off by airport security officers to make space for the
four crew members on the flight.
Dao was hospitalized and, according to his lawyer, lost two
front teeth, broke his nose, and suffered a concussion, and will
likely sue the airline.
The flight from Chicago to Louisville on April 9 saw the four
Republic Airlines crew members arrive at the gate around the
time of boarding and United offered increased compensation for
volunteers onboard due to the last minute nature of the request,
Munoz said in the letter to the Senate committee.
When the request for volunteers was unsuccessful, the United
crew followed an "involuntary denied boarding process," he
added.
Four passengers were then selected to deboard the plane, with
fare class and domestic itineraries as the deciding factors.
Separately, United Airlines said on Thursday it would offer
passengers who volunteer to forfeit their seats on overbooked
flights up to $10,000 and limit the use of law enforcement to
safety and security issues alone.
The company also said traveling crews are to be booked onto a
flight 60 minutes before departure.
(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by
Amrutha Gayathri)
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