Zow
Footballguy
I actually don't think it's a "####ty" process. Like I said, I benefited from this a ton as a broke college student. And the airlines likely have smart math people that look at this stuff and come up with no-show rates and estimate the amounts that people are likely to take be to rescheduled. I think it's good business practice.Nah, greed is better.
Think about it this way...
United (and other airlines) are overbooking intentionally and counting on some passengers not showing up. They are basically getting free money for people not using their service/product (not factoring in the money they might have to dish out if everyone shows up).
You don't find it at least a little bit shady and unethical?
Wouldn't a much more fair method be to sell those "projected overbooked" seats as what I would call "maybe" tickets? Give the customer full disclosure. Say, look...you will get on this flight if some people don't show up....but if everyone shows, you can't board.
It's currently a ####ty process, as shown by this recent occurrence.
1. The United situation, as people have pointed out, isn't this situation -- since they needed to involuntarily remove people to unexpectedly try to squeeze in crew.
2. United failed miserably at troubleshooting a unique situation. They should have measures in place for when people just simply refuse to board. Heck, there had to be some people on that plane who would have gotten off for 2k cash, which is totally the range United should have gone. But they didn't. But that's on United, not the process.