I think it would be very surprising for the airline to deny 4 passengers boarding and have to pay them 200% of the fare in compensation when the P1 member was delayed such that they did not reach gate by required time
At T-15 , any offloading and processing of standby passengers will have had to have been completed. A few minutes later and not only would they have found a closed gate but the airline would have been flying with 4 empty seats whilst paying a large amount of compensation ( 4 * 200% of business class fares is quite a bit )
They were not chosen as ones to be denied just due to oversell, but due to being late at the gate
That the 4 passengers had already been rebooked onto a flight leaving 1 hour later sounds like good service was provided
My understanding (though I could be off the mark) is that to comply with DOT requirements, the airline has to have a defined process of selection of passengers to deny boarding
Anyway, hopefully this has given the passenger a great eye opening to not throwing money at buying status but look at fares/schedules/redemption values etc rather than having a blind loyalty to one airline and one scheme
Last edited by Dave Noble; May 15, 2017 at 4:28 pm