No, it's not extortion, it's breach of contract.
If he didn't' want to perform the contract, he shouldn't have taken it on.
This is not a great example of anything else, despite your hyperbole.
This is not a great example of anything else, despite your hyperbole.
I agree that technically it's breach of contract. The trouble is that humans who aren't lawyers think of tickets as options instead of futures. They think they're buying the right to board instead of an obligation to board.
I can also see the human-positive side effect. The marginal cost of an extra bum in a seat isn't high, so it makes sense to fill up the plane, but the economics only work out if there's enough people who pay more.
There are lots of ways to differentiate between these sets of people - service levels, flexibility, calendar patterns. But the internet reduces the price information asymmetry that calendar patterns rely on, and so we've come to this court case: making it a hard constraint rather than hoodwinking the relatively price insensitive business traveller.
Then we should also look at departure times, how often has a flight been delayed? Many people count on getting where they are going on time. That should also count as a breach of contract as well.
Edit: To take this to the absurd, you have to pay to make any changes to your ticket at after a certain point in time i.e. name. So when you receive the ticket and it has a gate listed, is that also part of the contract? I am not allowed to change anything printed there without paying, why should they be allowed?
Or do we say that things happen and we allow systems to be lenient?
Why can't we just pay our money, get our ticket, and then decide on our own whether we want to use it or not?
In that case, can the airline decide to simply not run the flight and keep everyone's money? It's a contract because both sides have accepted some number of terms. If it weren't you would forego all sorts of protections. When you (reasonably) want those back... guess what? Disputes are decided on the terms of the (sales) contract. How else would it work?
Maybe if a ticket actually held some sort guarantee for getting a seat on an airplane things would be different...
No they don't. They overbook to maximize profits, yes. It sucks and is completely anti-consumer, yes. However, they do not simply send you packing. They re-book you. You also agree to it when you buy the ticket. Again, yes, it's buried in the contract and since every airline does it you really have no choice.
It's far from perfect/fair, but that has nothing to do with what I responded to. If "everything doesn't have to be a contract" then you have no legal recourse. Ever. Sales need to be contracts in the eyes of the law, but that doesn't mean everything is perfect.