First, at this point it's reasonable to expect passengers in the US to know that their booking is subject to availability in some limited number of edge cases. It's not particularly common but it's also very public knowledge that it sometime does happen.
Second, both parties have a cost to rebook - passengers pay a rebooking fee, airlines pay a bump fee (in a voucher if the passenger is foolish enough to accept that). Additionally, the rebooking fee for a passenger is significantly lower as a % of ticket cost than it is for the airline.
I question that. My guess is that the vast majority of the people who get a seat assignment when they book, never consider the possibility it might be taken from them. Most of the time, people are conditioned to not want to cause a scene, but I can bet no one is too happy about it when a breach of contract happens.
Airlines are unique in that lots of people go along with this. If you sign a lease to rent your house to someone and on the day they arrive with their moving truck you tell them you decided to lease it to your brother, there is a good chance you will end up in court.
It's very odd that you consider this a breach of contract, because these contracts are pretty heavily policed by regulators and the courts. Check every ticket you've bought, the contract of carriage includes terms specifically about overbooking.
For instance, here's United's Rule 4G:
All of UA’s flights are subject to overbooking which could result in UA’s inability to provide previously confirmed reserved space for a given flight or for the class of service reserved. In that event, UA’s obligation to the Passenger is governed by Rule 25.
You are partially right in the sense of the one-sided document that they impose on their customers, they reserve the right to not let you board. In the case of the United passenger (and many others that came to light after this assault) the person had already boarded. At that point, the reasons for not transporting (Rule 21) are spelled out and they don't include reasons like ("we decided to use the seat for our employee" or "a gold member wants the seat"), etc.
>...because these contracts are pretty heavily policed by regulators and the courts.
The idea of involuntary bumping should probably be viewed as regulatory capture. We don't allow that in other industries.
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights#Overbo...
I guess the only way to force them out of this habit would be to make the compensation mandatory at 10x the ticket price, in cash, on the spot. And a seat on the next plane, plus free accomodation for the bumped person if the next plane is more than 8 hours away.
Also a bonus if overbooking helps keep the route to the rinky-dink airport in my hometown operating so that I don't have to drive in for the last leg of my holiday trips.
That's not an argument.
Else we can ask what about those who can't afford an airplane ticket at all? Perhaps nobody should ever fly since we can't assume that these people don't have important plans either?
>Their plans less important because they can't afford the no-bump class?
No, but their purchase power is clearly less -- which is what determines what one buys (and if one can afford to fly in the first place), not the importance of their plans.
(The only place where the argument holds is in things like organ transplant waiting lists, which we don't want to turn into a market -- and we'd be less hypocritical if we extended it into general free/same-price healthcare for all).
The obvious answer is "chartered jet" has a 100% seat guarantee, but that's an order of magnitude more expensive.
Anyways, the bumping situation only would come up rarely, most oversold flights don't have to bump anyone and usually oversold flights have volunteers before they have to involuntary bump someone.
Airlines don't have an interest to bump passengers. At least in Europe this can be relatively costly as in up to 600EUR compensation per passenger. Add hotel rooms, multiple restaurant visits, taxis and communication costs to that. Add the image loss if this happens too frequently.
Airlines employ extremely complex math and statistical models to avoid bumping passengers, while filling the plane to capacity and mostly it works out. If it doesn't they usually find volounteers, who are willing to be bumped, provided that they are fairly compensated and provided with a reasonable alternative.
Job interviews are readily rescheduled if you're bumped against your will.
Airlines already have bereavement flights that give the bereaved priority and extra flexibility.
We already have regulations that compensate people who are bumped against their will so it's not in the airlines best interest to do so, it's expensive.
BTW, my mom missed her dad's funeral due to the 1981 air traffic controller strike.
When I buy something, I should not need an hour to read a contract.
Airlines are able to get away with this cause they haven't been challenged in courts. But once challenged, it will be deemed illegal.
I suggest you Google "is airline overbooking legal?" Literally, the very first link returned is titled "here's why it's legal for airlines to kick you off your flight" http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/here-s-why-it-s-legal...
Not only is it specifically legal, the regulations actually state that airlines have to give passengers a pamphlet spelling out their legal rights if bumped, and how much a passenger must be compensated if they are bumped. If it were illegal, don't you think the pamphlet would say "hey, the airline can't do this to you?"
What kind of legal scrutiny are you looking for? And do you not think that, among the tens of thousands of passengers who are involuntarily bumped in a year, not one of them would have challenged this in court by now?
Say you're an airline, and you notice that all your planes get fully booked, but on every flight, 2 to 5 passengers do not turn up or miss their flight.
That means that you can easily sell 2 extra tickets for each flight. That's free money (as good as; fuel consumption will go up a tiny bit)
Now, there's the rare case where too many passengers turn up. So, you pick out a college student or backpacker who is happy to take a flight an hour later in exchange for money, a free ticket for another flight, or whatever. That costs you a bit, but as long as it is rare enough, the net result still is extra money, and, ideally, everybody is happy.
Airlines have departments that compute the ideal amount of overbooking.
So, how can it be legal? That's easy; if you book a flight, you accept terms and conditions, and no government has seen reason to make it illegal.