Aw, just an extra 25 bucks to guarantee you won't get roughed up by some rentacops at the GA's direction?? That's a great value!! @:-)

The problem is the existence of IDBs. Airlines should be required to VDB seats as needed except in very specific and unusual instances.

There will almost always be someone on any flight:
1. For whom VDB compensation being offered is equal to 2 weeks' pay or more (teens, college students, etc)
2. Who is retired and doesn't have to be at their destination immediately (flexible schedule)
3. Who is mileage running and WANTS to get kicked off so that he/she can use the money to do more mileage runs

Those people would submit low bids, and would be first to get booted from the plane. If not, many people going on vacation would gladly take $2000-$5000 if it gets that high. That money could pay for many nice dinners, some extra hotel nights, etc.

I volunteered for VDB multiple times last year because I fell into category (3). I never actually got selected but I was one of the first people to talk to the GA to volunteer to get booted in exchange for money.

bolding mine

I was on a UA flight where they needed 5 volunteers because weather at ORD had deteriorated since boarding began. It was no more complicated than doing this at the gate. They offered 5 roundtrip tickets on UA anywhere in the lower 48 and at least 5 people volunteered. I was one of those five. We were re-accommodated but obviously not on the same flights as we were not all going to the same place.

So, if they don't get enough volunteers, and let's say for the sake of example that 3 more are needed, I say, get on the PA and announce "we need 3 more volunteers and we need to know how much compensation is required to convince you to get off; please ring your call button if your travel plans are flexible at all". A few people will ring their call buttons (anything from $500 UA money + miles or a free ticket, to a million dollars), so the GA just goes from one person to the next, write down seat number and dollar amount/general offer, then go back to the gate and figure out who should be selected for VDB (obviously the $500 people not the one million dollar people), then go back on the plane and resolve the situation and get your needed volunteers. It's not that hard.

An app is utterly useless in a fluid situation where you are on the plane and suddenly it is overweight because of additional fuel requirements due to weather. @:-)

This whole issue has never been about VDB/IDB at the gate. It has been about how you handle VDB/IDB in the post-Dao paradigm* when people are already on the plane.

*Post-Dao paradigm meaning that pax will be apprehensive to leave their seats, leading to most negotiations around alternative travel plans, hotel stays, layover duration, etc. done in the plane with everyone in attendance.

I agree, but there is always the small possibility that passengers could collude to drive the price to an outrageous level.

Take off the legal cap on VDB compensation. If an airline must still IDB a ticketed and confirmed passenger, then have a set IDB payout of $10,000 for up to a 4 hour delay, $25,000 for more than 4 hours. We won't change this practice unless we change the risk / reward math for the airlines.

It's called protection money. A staple racket for organized crime. So maybe this does make some sense.

What's interesting is that as the compensation for VDB goes up, not only does it increase the likelihood of getting a volunteer, but it also increases the pool of volunteers who would accept contingent on the accommodations provided by the carrier. Does the airline then attempt to determine what all said accommodations are in order to determine which pax is the least costly to VDB?

I can see a new area for travel blogging: how much free swag one can get negotiating a VDB. It would be pretty funny to watch, akin to those crazy bazaars where haggling is the norm. Not sure how time efficient it would be though, especially if has to be done in the plane because pax are already seated.

Just make IDB a flat penalty of $10k and rebooking on any flight of the passengers choosing. Then let the airlines figure out the rest. They will be incented to come up with a good VDB program.

The simple solution to the post Dao paradigm is that no one is allowed to board the plane until the seating manifest is final. The result will be that if you are in group 5 getting your bag into an overhead compartment will be the least of your worries

No absolute dollar amounts should EVER be written into any law. There's this thing called inflation. You need to have the penalty track the prices of tickets, so tying it to the most expensive fare available on the flight is better.

Ever increasing amounts of VDB has limits if issued in one year expiry "UnitedBucks". The passenger that could fully utilize $2000 in ETC very likely has opted in well before offers getting that high.


Separately no IDB allowed for those under 21 due to hotel registration policies.

I have found ORD agents to be very generous in offers. In MSP, home, the UA agents act as though the compensation is coming from their own pockets.

What is the possible mechanism for such collusion? There is none.
Even if you are talking about a conspiracy to buy up the entire plane and drive the price up, you'd have to collude before you know it will pay off on that particular flight. And you'd split those one or two awards with what, the entire plane's passengers? And the airline always has the option of canceling the flight. There are so many options that there should never ever be any cap, as is the case with virtually every market that you interact with numerous times daily without batting an eye.

There's some interesting game theory associated with this scenario (trying to corner the market for VDBs) as well. What if you actually get ~170 people together in a group and they conspire to buy out an entire 737-900 and force the VDB price up? First of all, if one of the people has a car crash on the way to the airport and is carrying two others and all 3 of them no show, no one gets anything. So I would hope that all of them had fully refundable tickets. Second, what if one of the 170 is a defector? They all agree that they will bid $50000 to get off the plane, but this person bids $49999, and instead of sharing the profits with everyone, he pockets it. So what do the other 169 people do? Sue him? If they do that, they'd have to admit that they colluded first...

Exactly. The reason why no caps (and hence no IDB's) is the right solution, aside from the obvious angle of freedom from violence (broadly defined), is that it forces the right allocation and pricing. Say VDB gets too "expensive," then the airlines will adjust accordingly their planning and other backup alternatives. You give rational agents any form of "out" then you are simply introducing perverse incentives that ultimately lead to, as we see, grossly unwelcome results.

I would note that, in practice, any scenario in which the VDB price gets extremely high, say into the $5000-10000 range, would likely have an extremely high number of people who absolutely have to get where the flight is going and have schedules which cannot change. Said flight would also be likely to have a lot of pax who paid for full fare tickets, and would be turning a huge profit anyway. The airline would be able to afford to pay large amounts of VDB compensation in such a scenario.