You can go to the faa website and read how much cash, it's some multiple of the ticket price.
I don't think that law should exist. They should be required to pay whatever it takes to get enough people to go willingly.
Note that this behavior is extremely, unbelievably rare. N=1 over hundreds of millions of flights rare.
There is a lot of other discontent regarding bumping on oversold flights, but the existence of a cash minimum doesn't by necessity lead to assaulting passengers.
Yes, assault is super-rare in these cases, but unhappy passengers are fairly common. People hate the airlines for overbooking. If they always offered enough compensation for people to be willingly bumped, this wouldn't be the case.
If no such law exists, and everyone refuses up to like a million dollars, than what, the plane just sits there and nobody leaves? There should be some cap. Maybe it should be higher, but not unlimited. (I'd be more in favor of no overbooking at all honesty)
The other part of the problem is lack of awareness. Most people in the US don't know you are legally entitled to cash if bumped involuntarily. If they knew, more would hold out for cash instead of vouchers.
Your hypothetical is silly. What if Jesus Christ descends from the heavens and declares air travel to be a mortal sin? That's about as likely. It's not going to be impossible to find a few people among 100+ who are willing to take the next flight for an amount of money that's at least vaguely reasonable.
And if airlines don't want to risk it, they always have the option of not overbooking. This way it's their choice how to handle it.
We can argue that the cash offer should be higher, but when was the last time you even saw the voucher bids go up past a thousand dollars and then get replaced by cash? I'm guessing never since you didn't even know it was the law. I've never seen it, only increasingly high voucher offers.
* Also it's not 10%, it's like 1 in 100000 passengers.
Assumes facts not in evidence. I'm well aware of the law. I'm also well aware that the law specifies a pretty low cap on what airlines are required to give.
Offering people worthless vouchers and then bumping people involuntarily for a mere 4x their fare for that segment is very much not what I was referring to in my original comment.
But then I'm confused, is the complaint that for the 0.001% of passengers, they should get higher cash compensation? Because the other 99.999% of passengers either board without issue or take vouchers.
This article paints involuntary bumping as some terrible thing the airlines are saddled with, and this new approach offers a way to finally get past it. Which just isn't the case at all.
No, the United "thing" (aka the assault) happens when they decide that a someone who made travel plans, paid for a seat, travelled to the airport, went through security and waited for the plane just to have the airline decide that they would breach their contract and use the seat for their employee. The fact that the individual had already boarded the plane meant the poorly trained security people had to use an extreme amount of violence against him, but even if they had stopped him before boarding the plane, it doesn't explain or excuse the companies willful breach of contract.
Or maybe, the plane leaves because it's full, and everyone has boarded?
It's beyond me why anything thinks it's a good idea to hold up a full plane because someone else wants to board.
Let's say this suggestion was implemented in law. In civil law, they could always breach their contract with you, and refuse you boarding anyway.
You'd then sue them and be awarded damages because they breached their contract with you. But it'd cost you a ton of money to do that, and so nobody will do this.
The law that sets the compensation amount shortcuts this and gives you the money more directly.
"Be required to pay whatever it takes" is the default position of a contract. If you want to return to that, you'll be stuck with the situation above.
You could instead increase the statutory compensation amount. Then they'd be in an reverse auction situation. They'd rarely need to force anyone off because some passenger will cave sooner for the money.
In other words, you'll get what you want if you increase the statutory compensation amount, but you won't if you eliminate it as you suggest.
The limit on small claims court is usually 5 thousand and small claims court doesn't cost a "ton of money" and is very accessible. Since anyone could be bumped, there are cases where I am sure the damages would be greater than 5 thousand, but then you would have the incentive and means to hire a lawyer.
The law to set up compensation limits in the US was done to lower the costs to the airlines, not as some way to help the consumer. There is no reason that anyone should ever be involuntarily bumped - this law just made people think this was somehow acceptable.
You risk being awarded just a refund of the ticket, which I'm sure that United would offer anyway. And then you'd be down court fees and perhaps loss of earnings for a day to attend court. It's not worth it for ordinary people.
> The law to set up compensation limits in the US was done to lower the costs to the airlines, not as some way to help the consumer.
Overbooking lowers ticket prices. Lowering costs to airlines lowers ticket prices.
Court fees for small claims court are minimal. Your original claim was that it cost "tons of money" - I think you will agree that is not true. Your claim that "It's not worth it for ordinary people is just a guess. My guess is that the vast majority of the people who get a seat assignment when they book never consider the possibility it might be taken from them. Most of the time, people are conditioned to not want to cause a scene, but I can bet no one is too happy about it when the other side doesn't fulfill their end of the deal. Having even a small number of people filing cases against the airlines would cost the airlines far more than than they currently pay out (they have to show up at court etc) - it would also likely lead to class action lawsuits, etc. Those low statutory limits on payouts are there to make sure the cost to the airline is minimal.
>...Overbooking lowers ticket prices. Lowering costs to airlines lowers ticket prices.
I didn't say anything was wrong with overbooking. Whether it results in lower ticket prices or leads to more profit for the airline will actually vary, but it is ultimately immaterial - making more productive use of airplanes is good for everybody. The issue is involuntary bumping and treating this as somehow acceptable. If the airlines screw up and have too many passengers for too few seats, it is up to them to solve the problem through voluntary means - the system described in this article is one way to help do that.
In the end, the whole idea of involuntary bumping should probably be viewed as regulatory capture. We don't allow that in other industries.
Agreed. That would be the "free market". They always would find people if they offered enough money.