How can you blame the customer for being cheap, when the airline sets the parameters? If I pay x money to Air Canada for a flight, that is what I have been asked for and willingly handed over. For that money, I've had to buy my ticket several months in advance. I don't get any luggage allowance, if I want to pick a seat in advance that costs money. And flexibility? Haha, it would cost more to change the ticket than the whole thing cost in the first place.

The problem is, money talks and a latitude paying super-elite would not accept being bumped. Rightly of course. But actually, the K paying organised months in advance purchaser shouldn't be bumped either, no way.

As for buying cheap tickets.... you can choose on Aircanada.com to pay 40% more for flex, (which in the real world doesn't make the ticket anymore flexible, and is a busted value proposition for the majority of travelers). But on any other booking website and for the average lay person, you can't choose anything other than the cheapest ticket. Are you saying they should abandon their travel agent, or aggregator, blindly go to AC.COM and deliberately pay a high fare so they don't get bumped. That's a laughable argument.

The real problem is over the years, airline tickets have become more and more inflexible... to the point "flex" is now a totally inappropriate name. But with overbooking, or overselling, we've not only lost our flexibility to change anything without busting hard earned savings into evaporating digital funds, we've also found ourselves without flexibility an airline will even honour the booking.

Now I'm playing devils advocate here somewhat. I accept that overbooking needs to happen and is part of the airline game, I've benefited from it in the past and probably needs to continue, with stronger legislation and rules on what can and can't be done.

BUT, the idea a customer is cheap and therefore deserving of any bump because he/she didn't pay enough for their seat is staggeringly brutal, and an inappropriate assessment on the customer base.

As for following all the protocols that might stop you getting bumped. Fine, but lets say everyone did that, you'd be back at square one. The airline will still have oversold, and they'll have made a packet on seat selections in the process (which will then be overrules).

"Oh yes, but not everyone is going to do that". That is true, but what if everyone did because the education about what happens otherwise gets ingrained. I'm reminded of when Ryanair introduced a small fee for priority boarding. I think it was about £3 added to the ticket. What happened? Everyone thought oh that's a good buy and not adding to the ticket cost much. Net result when I last flew with them... more people in the priority line than the standard.

All that would happen in the excuse would change (or maybe it would stay the same... cheapness). I don't buy the argument that all bumped passengers are the blame because they didn't buy a seat at booking anyway.