Comment: United used to be a decent airline. In October 2010, they merged with Continental which had always, in my experience, been a horrible airline. We were flying back from New England when Continental-uniformed staff stepped into United Airlines jobs and immediately the customer service took a nose-dive. I filed a complaint for the way they treated my mother-in-law for just being a little slow to respond to them. That was the same weekend the TSA started the nude photoscanning and pat down searches, so it was a miserable trip home and we're still waiting to hear back on that complaint.

I wasn't surprised to see this in the news. Arrogance will always show in a company eventually. That their own crew had priority over a passenger makes me wonder if United's CEOs and middle managers need to take a course on capitalism.

Back of this may be a government regulation about flight crew transport. Many business problems trace back to government rules forcing impossible choices.