Rush defending the airline. Sorry, but the practice of overbooking is fraud. Always has been. They are allowed to get away with it, because there is some rule that the ticket is not a contract.
Never really accepted that logic.
You know what is crazy, is that a Jet’s fan sued the NFL in 2007, because he came to reality that the NFL was fake. The ruling:
“At best, he possessed nothing more than a contractual right to a seat from which to watch an NFL game between the Jets and the Patriots, and this right was clearly honored,” Cowen wrote.
So what is the difference between paying for a seat in a stadium and paying for a seat on a plane?
I hate flying anymore. But once I got a 400 dollar voucher and a seat on a flight that left two hours later than the one I gave up. Another time I gave up my seat, and was given a first class seat on the next flight.
And that's all it is.
Nobody did this until Bob Crandall implemented it as part of the early implementation of Yield Management strategies.
It's outright deception. You have to read tiny lines in obscure locations to find the "rules". And it was controversial when it was started.
One of the other early adopters was People Express. The difference with them was that they routinely added a flight with floater aircraft to accommodate bumped passengers.
But no matter what accommodations are made, they are admitting that they aren't in the business of getting you anywhere on a timely basis. And if that's the case, why bother flying, at least on short to medium haul runs, at least when timeliness is a factor? It's a crapshoot.
They're allowed to get away with it because the airline industry has lobbyists who pay Congress-critters to influence legislation.
United Airlines even has its own PAC: http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00078261
I think you’ve nailed the problem. A “ticket” is a “contract”. A “rule” is not “law”
The core issue in this case is, as always, money. United bought themselves the right lobbyist (millions) so that when they felt like it (meaning “their” convenience) they can throw ANYBODY off their planes!
I guarantee you that IF they had announced that they would pay the first 4 people to get off the airplane $10,000.00 each there would have been people killed in the stampede to get off.
But, tightwad United only wanted to spend a couple hundred bucks to throw this doctor off the plane. Now they will spend hundreds of millions! And, they deserve it.
Rush had on a pilot that said it’s his way or the highway because they have rules. I don’t know where these “rules” are posted, but if I’m a paying customer, I’m not leaving that plane either.