Originally Posted by
Explorer789
Even the current IDB protocol should be limited to only before boarding starts. This gives incentives for the GAs to sort it out as early as possible. Once boarding starts, any checked-in passenger should be allowed to retain his/her seat. It seems extremely shortsighted that the GAs didn't know there were four employees that needed a seat on this flight and waited until all the pax were on board to resolve the issue.
As I said above, I have been in a situation in the past where they did not know until after boarding that the new crew would be needed. It is possible that is what happened in this case.
If the flight needs additional seats, then they should do so only through VDB offers. Had this been the policy, this would have been a non-issue on this flight since GAs would have kept upping the offer and surely someone will go for it in the mid-$1000s.
Again, I've been on flights where it didn't matter the amount, no one was volunteering as the next flight just didn't work for them. In this case, this wasn't a large mainline jet. It is very possible every person on that plane was just like this poor doctor and had to be at work, school, etc early the next morning and no amount of money was going to make up for missing that. I'm usually one of the first people to jump at a bump offer but there are times it doesn't matter how high it gets, I just can't justify taking it.