Originally Posted by
JBord
Right, this is the issue. You can't solve a business problem with a government regulation. UA needs to treat it as a business problem. They're free to overbook, but they have to appropriately accept and assess the risk if they want to avoid big payouts. Get rid of IDB and put a rule in place for the minimum and maximum allowed for VDB (some % of the full fare that's filed). Or as others have suggested, Dutch auction. This will force UA to address their business problem and re-evaluate how much they want to oversell and on which flights. Right now, there is little incentive for them to do so.
Sure government can solve. They can pass a law, add a regulation or whatever to make IBDs either not allowed or financially prohibitive except under certain conditions. This isn't rocket science. Make the airlines pay enough to get volunteers.