Except I'm not sure that this is entirely accurate, as has been widely discussed. United's own Contract of Carriage uses the term boarding and discusses overbo

Except I'm not sure that this is entirely accurate, as has been widely discussed. United's own Contract of Carriage uses the term boarding and discusses overbooked flights: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx#sec25 https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag... However, by all accounts (including the statement from Oscar Munoz) is that the Airline Employees needed to board after the customers had already boarded. The simple matter is that United really doesn't have a policy in place for such an event, but they tried to treat is as an overbooking anyways, which is questionable. If this had happened before the passenger got on there wouldn't have been much of a story - but United got themselves into a pickle by not having a procedure in place for moving their employees around when the plane was already loaded up and ready to go. Strictly speaking, refusing to leave was a violation of the airline's rules, but they also didn't really have the right to eject him per their own Contract. You don't surrender all rights when you board a plane, and quite frankly it doesn't seem like United has a lot of ground to stand on when it comes to this particular incident. They didn't have a policy in place and tried to make another one fit, but it was an awkward fit at best.