A few points:
- The public doesn't care about the details with the OTA and all that; all they see is UA being horrible yet again.
- True, if you don't have a ticket you don't fly, that's not hard to understand. But even if this wasn't UA's fault, they should have caught it earlier, when there could still be a possibility of the situation being remedied. Once the plane is ready to take off there's isn't much to do; but how did she check in and board on a cancelled ticket? That's when it should have been caught.
- Nice to see the NYT writing headlines in the same style as the clickbait garbage proliferating the web. NICE of them not to capitalize random WORDS, I suppose.