Originally Posted by janetdoe

....Glad I checked into this thread today, that is definitely food for thought.

Originally Posted by janetdoe

I think you going in a fundamentally wrong direction by trying to apply typical contract law to an airline.

Simply put, the rules don't apply to airlines. They have their own set of rules.

For example, this seems like a pretty typical example:
1. I purchase a ticket with UA that is supposed to get me to SFO at 10 am Monday morning. I have a 3:00 meeting to sign an important contract.
2. Due to UA's negligence, there is a mechanical problem with the plane I am supposed to fly on. All the other flights are going out on time, but they are booked full. Since my flight is only delayed a few hours, UA refuses to rebook me on another airline.
3. UA says I can switch to another flight, but I will have to throw away my $119 ticket (valueless due to the $150 change fee) and pay $1750, the cost of full-fare Y from DFW-SFO.

In what other industry can you create artificial scarcity due to your own negligence, and then jack up the price more than 10x in order for the customer to get some semblance of what they originally agreed to, and not get sued out of existence for fraud and/or price gouging?

The airlines are totally unique and have huge and arcane bodies of regulation that allow them to get away with things that would be unthinkable in any other industry.

So when one of those regulations happens to fall in the customer's favor, you might understand why we expect that regulation to prevail, in the face of circumstances that would be considered obscene in any other industry or court of law.