I guess I was looking more at it from the desperate passenger point of view. I wouldn't recommend a "psuedo-bidding" system where the price moved by a few dollars each time a ticket was purchased.

Rather, I'm thinking of the guy who's wife goes into labor 2 weeks early and he rushes to the airport to get on the next flight.... Only to find out that everything to BZN and anything within 250 miles is sold out until noon tomorrow. In this case, the poor guy is faced with essentially no options.

I guess he could do a big ATM withdrawl and go to the gate area and try to pay people to "accidentally" miss the flight so he could get a standby seat. But if the airline at least offered him the option of buying a seat from DEN to BZN for $4,500.... Everybody could come out of it happy.