Globaliser

Without wanting to debate the finer details of the exact legal obligations here, it's not hard to imagine a situation in which the airline might have a legal obligation to use "best endeavours" or reasonable endeavours" to provide accommodation in the booked cabin. Sometimes, things go wrong which mean that someone has to be downgraded without the airline : perhaps a seat breaks, or the normally-reliable and economically-necessary overbooking algorithms have not prevented an oversale of that particular cabin on that particular flight. The downgrade might occur despite the airline's "best endeavours" or "reasonable endeavours".

But if the airline downgrades someone who already has a reservation in a particular cabin while simultaneously offering someone else a paid upgrade to the same cabin, on the simple ground that the airline finds it will take more money from the paid upgrade than it will cost in compensation to the involuntary downgrade, it's hard to see how the airline would be using "best endeavours" or "reasonable endeavours" to provide the first passenger with a accommodation in the booked cabin. Indeed, it seems tantamount to acting in bad faith. And this is similar to the kinds of situation which have motivated the legal systems of some countries to make available awards of punitive (or "exemplary") damages.

So - although the armchair lawyers on FT might have a field day with the fine detail of this - in broad terms this is not necessarily only a moral judgment. It is behaviour of a kind that may well have legal consequences.