Originally Posted by
milypan
I'm pretty sure his point was that the only government "regulation" we need is one that says you can't involuntarily eject people from flights on which they have valid tickets (IOW, the airline can't breach its contract). Once we have that, then airlines will just raise the VDB offers until they get enough volunteers (see DL's new $9950 limit). If an airline finds it's getting "too expensive" to buy out passengers, it will stop overbooking as much. Problems solved.
Without the governmental regulation, airlines would most likely have included IDB provisions in their contracts, probably even less consumer friendly versions. In other words, just getting rid of the IDB regulation wouldn't necessarily help and neither would forcing airlines to comply with their contracts.
DL apparently doesn't believe the current IDB situation is sustainable in light of the recent events and the danger of more severe governmental action, so they effectively removed their internal cap on VDB payments. With luck others will follow.