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I reply here because you also commented here: Normal people who aren't lawyers think of tickets as options not futures; that is, an option to board, not an obl

I reply here because you also commented here: Normal people who aren't lawyers think of tickets as options not futures; that is, an option to board, not an obligation to board. That's how most people's experience of tickets work, starting out with cinema tickets from a young age, and working up to bus and train tickets later on. It may be that people need to get legal advice every time they buy a ticket, but that's probably not very efficient. The internet is decreasing the opacity of differential pricing, but premium airlines rely on differential pricing for their business model. Thus this case trying to move to harder constraints than mere obfuscation. The case will have PR value too, in changing the public's understanding of the nature of a plane ticket.

DannyBee 8y ago
I'm never going to argue making these things contracts is good policy, but it is in fact, the legal reality. You are focusing on one specific act here (the requirement to use the seat) but your other examples are amenable to plenty of other contractual issues. For example your cinema tickets include provisions not to bring in food most of the time, or to record/reproduce the movie. They often include affirmative acts you need to perform as well (if you want to go in that direction). Sometimes minimal, sometimes not. My "don't make contracts you don't want to keep" was based on the fact that literally every reaction prior to my comment was "this is extortion" or "this is unenforceable", and it is definitely neither. People rarely think of legal consequences of anything, and that's actually fine and normal. But if we want that to be the actual legal reality, changes are needed. Those changes do not come by simply saying "This is all bullshit and stupid and unenforceable". They come by explicitly realizing they are in fact enforceable and valid, accepting that, and then making these things not contracts (which would be hard) or otherwise setting up a different regime. (For example, the non-contractual regime that exists to handle baggage liability, or in a bunch of countries, to handle compensation for being kicked off flights)
- barrkel 8y ago
  To be clear, unlike many people it seems, I don't disagree with the principle of differentiated pricing, because I value the upside - cheap marginal seats. And indeed I'm not disputing that tickets are contracts. I do think that it's reasonable for people to assume, up until now, that tickets are options - that if you no longer agree with the terms before you've exercised it, you can just discard the ticket. That's the only real point I wanted to make, because you made it sound as if it's obvious that tickets may reasonably come with positive obligations to exercise, and I didn't think it was obvious to non-lawyers. I found it interesting that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_cases talks about retaining the ticket being a condition for being bound by the contract, that using the ticket is equivalent to signing the document, and whether a reasonable person would have known about the terms. Sounds like there could be some edge cases in there, but I don't have the education to be enlightening.
  - detaro 8y ago
    In the case from the article, the passenger claimed these terms were surprising enough to not be valid part of the contract. The court said that because price differences between combination tickets and single tickets are common and well-known it shouldn't be too surprising that the terms include a rule about this.

DannyBee 8y ago

I'm never going to argue making these things contracts is good policy, but it is in fact, the legal reality. You are focusing on one specific act here (the requirement to use the seat) but your other examples are amenable to plenty of other contractual issues. For example your cinema tickets include provisions not to bring in food most of the time, or to record/reproduce the movie. They often include affirmative acts you need to perform as well (if you want to go in that direction). Sometimes minimal, sometimes not. My "don't make contracts you don't want to keep" was based on the fact that literally every reaction prior to my comment was "this is extortion" or "this is unenforceable", and it is definitely neither. People rarely think of legal consequences of anything, and that's actually fine and normal. But if we want that to be the actual legal reality, changes are needed. Those changes do not come by simply saying "This is all bullshit and stupid and unenforceable". They come by explicitly realizing they are in fact enforceable and valid, accepting that, and then making these things not contracts (which would be hard) or otherwise setting up a different regime. (For example, the non-contractual regime that exists to handle baggage liability, or in a bunch of countries, to handle compensation for being kicked off flights)

barrkel 8y ago
To be clear, unlike many people it seems, I don't disagree with the principle of differentiated pricing, because I value the upside - cheap marginal seats. And indeed I'm not disputing that tickets are contracts. I do think that it's reasonable for people to assume, up until now, that tickets are options - that if you no longer agree with the terms before you've exercised it, you can just discard the ticket. That's the only real point I wanted to make, because you made it sound as if it's obvious that tickets may reasonably come with positive obligations to exercise, and I didn't think it was obvious to non-lawyers. I found it interesting that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_cases talks about retaining the ticket being a condition for being bound by the contract, that using the ticket is equivalent to signing the document, and whether a reasonable person would have known about the terms. Sounds like there could be some edge cases in there, but I don't have the education to be enlightening.
- detaro 8y ago
  In the case from the article, the passenger claimed these terms were surprising enough to not be valid part of the contract. The court said that because price differences between combination tickets and single tickets are common and well-known it shouldn't be too surprising that the terms include a rule about this.