You need to think through to the logical conclusion of your point. If you believe in the free market system, market based pricing is the only logical approach. If you want the government to regulate the market in order to make it more humanistic (and might I add, capricious), then you do not believe in the value of the free market and capitalism.
If the government gets to decide what is reasonable profit, Katy-bar-the-door. Free people get to decide what is reasonable based on their own pocketbook and over-pricing is eventually curbed by loss of demand.
If the folks who agreed to pay $4000 for their tickets out of town didn’t want to have to pay so much, they should have made plans in advance of the approaching storm. That mistake cost them.
Under the system you seem to espouse (with government intrusion), the airline would have been forced to prioritize the assignment of the available seats by interviewing each of the passengers in order to ascertain their need for travel and assign each based on the subsequent numerical score. Or maybe a lottery system should be set up, just to be fair, in these situations.
No, airlines operate on very low profit margins. Airlines lost millions of dollars due to flight cancellations, diversions and equipment grounded (and therefore accruing costs but zero revenue) during this storm. Don’t begrudge them just a tiny bit of revenue recovery.
I'm not espousing government intrusion.
If the folks who agreed to pay $4000 for their tickets out of town didn’t want to have to pay so much, they should have made plans in advance of the approaching storm.
Some could, some couldn't.
That mistake cost them.
This statement makes me wonder if there were any who couldn't afford the $4,000 were injured or killed during the storm. We'll probably never know.
Airlines lost millions of dollars due to flight cancellations, diversions and equipment grounded (and therefore accruing costs but zero revenue) during this storm.
I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet the airlines have insurance to cover these types of situations.
Don’t begrudge them just a tiny bit of revenue recovery.
I "begrudge" anyone benfitting from immoral behavior.