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Overbooking would be fine if all of their sales literature makes it clear that you're effectively buying a lottery ticket to get on the plane. If it's being sol
by mook 2y ago
Overbooking would be fine if all of their sales literature makes it clear that you're effectively buying a lottery ticket to get on the plane. If it's being sold as a confirmed ticket, it needs to be actually there. They already have a mechanism to do that too; you can get on waitlists.
Turns out they can't sell things at the same price when it's a waitlist, though.
- yuliyp 2y agoOf all the reasons my travel might get interrupted, overbooking is among the least likely. It sucks when it happens, but so does anything (flight delay/cancellation, missed connection, etc.) that means I don't get where I wanted to on time. The compensation paid out to people bumped due to oversold flights is high enough that it's really almost a non-issue in practice.
- alexanderchr 2y agoYeah as long as the compensation for involuntary deboarding due to overbooking is high enough I don’t see a problem with the practice. It would be a huge waste to force airlines to fly around with empty seats to reduce the already tiny risk of someone getting kicked off the plane due to overbooking and lack of volunteers.
- tacocataco 2y agoWhy does the airline get to use violence to pay under market value to get someone off their plane? Keep bidding up the compensation till someone volunteers. Don't like the cost? To bad.
- alexanderchr 2y agoThat’s just not how contract law works, at least in the west. You will generally never be forced to fulfil your obligations under a contract, rather you have to (reasonably) compensate the other party if you cannot.
- schoen 2y agoFor more on this topic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_performance