The man who was forced out of his seat on an overbooked United flight yesterday may be the most famous, but he certainly wasn’t the first passenger to be turned away involuntarily by the airline.
Of all the major airlines that flew 40 million passengers or more between 2008 and 2016, United had the highest rate of passengers who were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the US Department of Transportation.
(*Note: US Airways merged with American in 2013.)
A very small percentage of air travelers in the United States are involuntarily denied boarding their flights each year. Out of 600 million passengers who flew (or attempted to fly) United in those nine years, about 65,000 customers were denied their seats without agreeing to give them up. That’s a higher rate than any other airline, at 0.0107%. Delta had the lowest rate among large airlines, at 0.0047%.
Overall, involuntary boarding denial has become less common over the past few decades in the US. From 1990 to 2015, the overall rate dropped from 0.016% to 0.008%.
Although United had the highest rate among large airlines, several smaller airlines denied even a larger share of passengers from taking their seats between 2008 and 2016:
- American Eagle (0.0233%)
- Mesa Airlines (0.0208)
- ExpressJet (0.0197)
- Envoy Airlines (0.0196)
- Atlantic Southeast (0.0172)
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