Originally Posted by
Allan38103
The "I" in IDB stands for "Involuntary". As in "mandatory". So you need something to coerce enforcement. That's called a "law", and for that you need government, as in "Congress". Fat chance of ever getting something contrary to the airlines industry's interest to make it through the lobbying process. Any meaningful change would take YEARS to enact. A market- based solution could be enacted in 48 hours.
If there were no "I", but just a "V"DB. The market would have found the appropriate price for the compensation in this recent incident.
For whatever the government does, or fails to do, the airline industry will adjust its business models, pricing structure, and CoC's to adapt. And wouldn't THAT end up better for the customer?
You seem to be agreeing with me, albeit with a lot of unnecessary quotation marks. My point was IDB is a rule for the airlines to fall back on. They can do whatever they want and understand what their cost will be. If they were forced to VDB, the market would set the VDB price for any given flight.
Originally Posted by
findark
An airline IDBing a passenger is roughly akin to them breaching a contract for transport. I think it's completely reasonable to provide for compensation in this case by statute, and in relation to the original cost of the service contracted for.
If the general belief of society is that the IDB payment does not sufficiently disincentivize the practice (i.e. Dr. Dao was probably only going to be due around $400 instead of the $800 voucher offered), then the solution should simply be to raise the defined amount of IDB comp. The idea that an airline should be on the hook for "whatever it takes" is unrealistic and not conducive to business as it carries an unlimited risk. The vast majority of contract law is built around the idea of there being well-defined (contractural or precedent from previous torts) consequences for breach of contract.
You're looking at this from a legal perspective, and I from a business perspective. Ultimately, a good solution needs both. My point wasn't that it would be unlimited risk, it's that UA, as a business, would find other ways to reduce that risk, such as limiting the overbooking situations on certain routes, flights, or days.
Part of the problem is there is not much incentive for them to tighten their business practices because they have the power to IDB.