Originally Posted by
pinniped
We may be saying the same thing here: I suggest that zero-IDB can be a goal, and an airline can get incredibly close by using technology better. I realize they cannot fully get to zero.
I don't believe IDB will be banned outright as some suggest. I continue to remain in favor of overselling, whether to paying passengers or with confirmed crew movements as part of the passenger load. Even the best technology and intentions of an airline can't prevent a broken seat, a weight issue, or some other reason that an IDB *could* happen.
The only regulatory fix is a simple one: make the IDB cash compensation meaningful, require each airline to fully publish their entire IDB algorithm, and provide some simple consumer protections on the instruments offered as VDB. Don't need to overhaul the system or change airline revenue management models. Just a measured action to provide some basic consumer protections that don't exist today.
...though I would argue that as revenue management continues to improve,
especially at UA with Orion, forecasts will get better at predicting overbookings, and therefore VDBs and IDBs will become far less common. Even looking at DOT data, all denied bookings industry-wide are at some of their lowest levels in a quarter of a century, even with the higher load factors taken into consideration.
The furor over this IDB situation is a highly emotional one to say the least, and this IDB story, like every other complaint anyone has about any airline they don't like, is mostly based on anecdotal experience. UA is not significantly worse at handling VDBs and IDBs than much of its competitors, and B6's commitment to never overbooking doesn't mean that they don't have some pretty crappy IDB rates as of late.
The issue here really has nothing to do with overbooking. The issue has to do with calling in LEOs who used excessive force on a passenger, and then UA's piss poor initial response to the entire thing. Had UA simply said "this video is horrifying and we're going to do an investigation to figure out what happened," even if nobody at UA actually believed that, the story probably would have died the next day.