> The airlines have run the numbers, and it is clearly more profitable to sell (for example) 105% of the plane, and then if more than 100% show up, pay people off to take a different flight.

I guess the op's question is, why was it not done here?

(Sadly) Everyone has a price for everything. Obviously that guy's price was not met. As you say, the airline has done the math... does their math include the cost of dragging a passenger bruised and bleeding off of their plane? Probably... Does it include the cost of cameras capturing the whole thing? Probably not.

I imagine that the there was effectively a "CAN'T HAPPEN" comment on what to do when nobody bit at $800. I can imagine the people writing the policy imagining that their employees might collude with friends on board to pocket the money if they let the offer get too high.

That's a problem with the processes in place in the airline. They have to do their own due diligence.

Who's to say that this man's price was the lowest price? Turn it into a bidding process, the lowest 5 bids on the plane get paid, and the airline gets their seats.

The potential for misuse is not a good excuse for accepting negative actions.

Oh, yes, I totally agree. When you have a "CAN'T HAPPEN" in a code comment that's a sign of laziness or bad design and the same applies to company procedures. Hopefully United will go back and seriously rethink how they go about this now. It's just sad it had to come to this to make it happen.

totally agree

That's a horrible reason in my opinion. What other industry could get away with doing this? If someone sold 105% capacity for a concert or sports game and just told the last 5% who arrived "sorry, no more room" people would be extremely upset.

The Telecoms have been selling > capacity for... ever(?). When a major event occurs & everyone picks up a phone to call in/out you get "all circuits are busy". Ever notice the hit to your inet speeds on holidays when all your neighborhood is home & idle?

On one hand, infrastructure costs for idle capacity would/could become cost prohibitive. On the other hand, the provider should be held aaccountable for their failing to provide reasonable uptime/service.

That's not really a fair analogy. It's difficult (or impossible) to predict major events like terrorist attacks or weather phenomena that cause phone circuits to overload. And when these events occur, telecom companies lose money.

But flights fill up every day. When they do, airlines maximize profit.

Agreed, major phenomena are exceptions to the norm, did not intend to convey any judgement on the practice. Those same phenomena affect airlines too. In fact, weather delays had hampered United's ops leading up to the ejection event in the news. My point was airlines are not the only ones who sell > capacity.

Hotels do it routinely. I've personally been moved to another hotel because we arrived later than enough of the checkins before us.

Don't hotels do the same thing too?

The problem is that's not what happened. They kicked this man off to prioritize their own employees. An overbooked flight would never be boarded before.