Re:Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
by mikeash on Thursday April 27, 2017 @08:19PM
(#14215955)
I'd be utterly shocked if it ever required more than, say, $2,000 to buy enough seats.
The trick, of course, is that it has to be actual United States Dollars, not this worthless fun money voucher stuff they usually offer.
I'm not quite sure I'm following. When the airline overbooks then tries to pay off passengers to accept a different flight the buyer is always the airline.
They're buying your seat back from you to satisfy their contract with someone else. I can't fathom a situation where every seat is infinitely valuable - out of several hundred people surely at least one person will accept a million dollars for example.
Overbooking can look like fraud, but if the airline offers an uncapped ever-increasing payout for a seat then the risk profile increases significantly for them and they'll do it to a lesser degree.