[ScottBurson]

They could just as easily have flown their employees to Louisville on a private jet.

I have even seen it suggested that the employees could even have gone by taxi, though I don't know if that was really practical.

Anyway, seems to me the best solution would have been to simply keep raising their offer for compensation until they got enough volunteers. Whatever they had to pay would have been far less than the $1.6B hit they took to their stock price.

(I actually like Delta's solution the best: they ask you when you check in how much you would accept to get bumped. It's fair and efficient.)

[leopoldo]

I actually agree that it is what they should have done. OR at least go up to the $1,350 that the regulation stipulates.

However I find it difficult to believe that the Airline (or the flight attendants manager) would have allowed a $5,000 compensation for the seat. Because they had no way of knowing how this was gonna unravel.

/

> Why the hell did you give this customer $5,000 for his seat, are you CRAZY?

>> M'am, I just prevented the biggest PR shitstorm in our company's history

> You're fired, and we'll make you pay those 5 grand

/ :)

[soneil]

I keep seeing $1350 mentioned. It's not a ceiling. $1350 (or 4x the cost of the leg, whichever is lower), is the maximum the airline is legally obligated to offer an involuntary refused-boarding.

They're free to offer $2000, $3000 if they think it's in their best interests (or in this case, cheaper than the inevitable suit). $1350 is just a cap on their legal obligation, not their moral.

[guelo]

Indeed. But I also keep thinking that regulation is broken. It should be just 4x, not 4x with a cap. If you paid $2k for the ticket the cap means the airline can steal from you. I'm sure airline lobbyists influenced that regulation.

[kelnos]

The airline is left to choose who they'll involuntarily bump. Typically someone paying $2k for a ticket is likely in business class, and they'd only ever bump someone from economy.

Note that the monetary compensation is in addition to rebooking the bumped passenger on a later flight, so even if an economy passenger had paid more than $1350 for the ticket initially, they are still getting $1350 in addition to a seat on another flight.

[zerkten]

>> Typically someone paying $2k for a ticket is likely in business class, and they'd only ever bump someone from economy.

That is not true. There are cases of business and first class being bumped (http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united...).

[kelnos]

The guy didn't get bumped; he got moved to a lower class of service. Same rules don't apply there.

Either way, my other point makes this not really matter; the compensation isn't a "refund" for the seat. It's compensation for the inconvenience, and the airline is still required to get you to your destination in addition.

[gambiting]

There was an article here yesterday saying that someone got kicked out of a 1st class seat on United plane(after already being seated) because they had to use a different plane that had fewer 1st class seats than the original plane planned for that flight - so after seating him, they kicked him out for a "higher priority" passenger.

[ghaff]

>If you paid $2k for the ticket the cap means the airline can steal from you.

I don't have a real opinion on what compensation levels should be. (Although there are enough IDB's that the answer is probably "not enough.") However, in addition to the compensation, the airline still has to get you to your destination.

[bpodgursky]

It's in addition to the original ticket price.

[presto8]

I'm sure you know this, but for the benefit of others: the money from being involuntarily denied boarding (in this case, the $1350 maximum) is cold hard cash. The money they offer to voluntarily give up your seat is vouchers which are only redeemable for travel on the airline and expire after some period (usually 1 year).

The airlines really hate giving up the cold hard cash since it hits their bottom line immediately, whereas the voucher is essentially "free" money.

[mcv]

So even if that rule applied here (which it doesn't), then United would still be in the wrong for not offering up to that limit.

[ScottBurson]

By the point where they were about to have an airport police officer beat the crap out of the passenger (which they did, BTW -- he suffered a concussion and two lost teeth!) it should have become clear that this wasn't going to go well. So once it was clear that Dao wasn't going to leave his seat voluntarily, they should have brought in a higher-up with the authority to offer more compensation to get another volunteer -- or simply pick another person to involuntarily deplane. (They could also have publicly threatened Dao with a civil lawsuit, figuring that even if that didn't change his mind, it would deter the next person they picked from doing the same thing he did.)

[differentView]

Saw on TV news this morning, those weren't even real cops. They were private security hired by United. They were even told to stop wearing jackets that said "POLICE" months ago, but kept wearing them.

[joezydeco]

They were Chicago Department of Aviation police. They're hired by the City Aviation department and usually have police training, but are not allowed to arrest citizens or carry guns (although they have been asking).

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/April-2017/3-Things-to-K...

tldr: They're rent-a-cops hired by the airport, not United.

[15155]

So, it stands to reason they have _zero_ civil immunity, unlike a sworn officer?

[joezydeco]

It does stand to reason.

However, this is Chicago. Locals know to never assume anything about city government because you'll tend to discover the opposite later on.

[srtjstjsj]

Why would you assume they aren't sworn officers? They are government employees.

[true_religion]

They're sworn officers acting off duty.

[nikanj]

They don't want to have that higher-up with authority on every airport. The fewer people can dole out compensation, the less compensation you end up paying.

[justinclift]

Doesn't seem to be a policy that's working out well for them though, when factoring in things like this happening.

[FabHK]

If they just picked another passenger, that rewards stubborn unruly behaviour. Next pax would then be well advised also to throw a hissy fit.

[DigitalJack]

The dude was complicit in the clusterfuck. Having seen the video it would surprise me if the man was sober and mentally sound.

The the officers screwed up the extraction, but the guy was ridiculous.

Did he actually believe wailing like a 2 year old and doing his damnedest to hold on to his chair would result in his remaining on the flight?

His face injuries were caused when he finally lost his grip on his seat. The effort of the guy extracting him suddenly had no resistance and the guy sprang out across the aisle and whacked his face hard on the aisle arm rest opposite him.

The whole thing was a shitstorm where mistakes kept compounding, made by both parties.

Of course the whole thing was instigated by united and I firmly believe they were in the wrong, but the passenger was obnoxious and not free of blame.

[victorhooi]

There are professionals that are trained to deal with this situation.

They have both the training, tools and experience to deal with this.

I'm not sure what happened here - apparently the officers were "Chicago Aviation Police" - which is different to the "Chicago Police Department" (i.e. what you and I would know as real police officers). Surely there was somebody they could have escalated to (or simply called in the actual Police Department) if they thought it had to come to this?

[colmvp]

A mentally unstable person decided to go on a police car and start yelling at the police. While up there, she broke the rear windows too. What did the police do? Did they shoot her? Did they taze her? Did they beat her? No. They waited. They waited till she came down from the top of the car at which point they restrained her.

Those police officers deserve praise for defusing the situation without escalating it. And at the same time, it also shows that yes, police can find ways to control situations without resorting to extreme violence. Even in this case on the airplane, I could easily imagine a competent officer saying to United, "is there any way you could convince someone else to give up their seat? Maybe offer more money?"

[srtjstjsj]

They are real police officers.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-united-chicago-aviatio...

[jacquesm]

That has to be the most clear case of victim blaming ever. Even United by now has decided that they are at fault and not the passenger. It took a bit of doing to convince them, wonder what it will take for you to be convinced?

[DigitalJack]

All you have to do is watch the video. It is not ambiguous.

[markdown]

> However I find it difficult to believe that the Airline (or the flight attendants manager) would have allowed a $5,000 compensation for the seat.

Delta has just announced they will offer up to 10k for giving up a seat.

[AnimalMuppet]

> OR at least go up to the $1,350 that the regulation stipulates.

IIUC, regulation stipulates $1350 or 4 x the fare, whichever is lower. For Chicago to Louisville, the fare may well have been $200. If so, stopping at $800 was within the regulation.

[patpending]

Are there any lawyers around who can explain the $1350 limit? Some sites like DailyKOS[1] have claimed that the $1350 "limit" has been misinterpreted. What it really means is that $1350 (or four times the fare, whichever is less) is the maximum amount the airlines are required to pay. It does not mean that they cannot pay more, nor that it is illegal for them to do so.

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/4/11/1652290/-The-Widely-...

[scott00]

Not a lawyer, but it's really very simple. The law defines the minimum compensation an airline must offer a passenger denied boarding. It does not define a maximum amount. As is generally true for most entities, there is nothing preventing airlines from paying anybody they want as much money as they want, for anything or for nothing. So they are perfectly free to offer more money than that. But in a practical sense, it is ALSO the maximum that any airline will actually offer. Why offer someone $1500 to give up their seat voluntarily when you can boot them involuntarily for $1350? They're not in the airline business out of love, they're going to solve problems for the least amount of money possible. Imagine if Comcast put on your bill "Please pay at least $74.99, or more if you think it's fair." Sure, a few crazy people might send $200 out of their unadulterated love of their cable service, but the vast vast majority of people are gonna send exactly $74.99. It's both the minimum allowed legally, and the maximum expected in practice.

[patpending]

I think I understand. To be fair, I haven't heard United claim that $1350 was the limit, but I've heard people on CNN and elswhere claim that (in effect) the airline's hands were tied and they could not offer more than $1350.

I suppose an excellent reason for an airline to offer more than $1350 would be to avoid losing $1.6 billion off its stock price.

[tyingq]

At the very least, the law is applicable only to "Involuntary Denied Boarding". They can offer whatever they want for volunteers.

[markdown]

Delta has just announced they will pay up to 10k.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-offer-10000-to-flyers-give...

[bzbarsky]

The _airline's_ hands were not tied. But the hands of the agents on the spot might have been tied, by airline policy. Because said policy may well have said they can't offer more than the required legal thing.

[RyanCavanaugh]

You can read the law and it's quite clear.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.2b

Carriers to request volunteers for denied boarding.

In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall request volunteers for denied boarding before using any other boarding priority. A “volunteer” is a person who responds to the carrier's request for volunteers and who willingly accepts the carriers' offer of compensation, in any amount, in exchange for relinquishing the confirmed reserved space. Any other passenger denied boarding is considered for purposes of this part to have been denied boarding involuntarily, even if that passenger accepts the denied boarding compensation

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.5

Amount of denied boarding compensation for passengers denied boarding involuntarily.

Compensation shall be 400% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $1,350, if the carrier does not offer alternate transportation that, at the time the arrangement is made, is planned to arrive at the airport of the passenger's first stopover, or if none, the airport of the passenger's final destination less than two hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight.

(c) Carriers may offer free or reduced rate air transportation in lieu of the cash or check due under paragraphs (a) and (b) of this section, if - (1) The value of the transportation benefit offered, excluding any fees or other mandatory charges applicable for using the free or reduced rate air transportation, is equal to or greater than the cash/check payment otherwise required;

---

There's a section about volunteers, which may be compensated in any amount (literally the phrase "in any amount" appears), and a completely separate section for how much you have to pay people involuntary denied boarding, which specifies something that looks like a fixed amount. And even if you're involuntarily denied boarding, you may accept non-cash compensation that equals or exceeds the statutory minimum.

There is simply no basis for the claim that an airline can't offer more than $1,350 in vouchers during a search for a volunteer. It's plainly refuted by the text of the law.

[jacquesm]

They should get rid of the vouchers / credit options, just cold hard cash on the spot, no 'gotchas' because they'll stand there yelling $800 but when you want to collect they hand you a bunch of monopoly money with all kinds of restrictions.

[aidenn0]

To clarify what jacquesm is talking about (since I've gotten said monopoly money from United when voluntarily being bumped) I ended up with something like 4 $100 vouchers that must be used for a flight within 1 year and cannot be combined for a single flight.

They also said they'd put us on first-class for our flight the next day, but didn't.

So when they say "$400" they really mean 4 $100-off coupons that expire in 1 year.

[georgemcbay]

I am not a lawyer, but the $1350 is like a cap on the 4x amount. If the fare is $200 they must offer up to $800 ($200x4). If the fare is $400, they must offer up to $1350.

$400x4 = $1600, so without that $1350 cap they would have to offer $1600 using the 4x rule, but because that cap exists they can offer just $1350. Basically any fare above $337.5 can be treated as the same amount by the airlines, which is kind of silly since that's a really low fare relative to any kind of average flight cost.

The way people seem to be getting confused is assuming that cap is the maximum they can legally pay.. it isn't, it is the capped minimum they have to pay when following the 4x rule.

[tyingq]

I'd watch this space too. Congress likes to find ways to be heroes during this sort of PR storm. So I bet you see a bill bumping that compensation number up, and maybe making the terms more friendly overall. Who would vote against it?

[RyanCavanaugh]

There is no regulatory cap for voluntary payments. From the law:

> A “volunteer” is a person who responds to the carrier's request for volunteers and who willingly accepts the carriers' offer of compensation, in any amount, in exchange for relinquishing the confirmed reserved space.

See https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.2b

[gt565k]

I had a flight get delayed twice for a few hours and then a smaller plane arrived, so people had to get bumped.

I waited for a bit and then talked to the Delta rep at the counter, explaining that I really needed to get to my destination soon as my friend was waiting to pick me up, and if they had a flight available in the coming hour or two, I'd volunteer to be bumped.

Received a $400 voucher, and got placed in 1st class on a flight which departed 30 minutes after my delayed flight.

It was a win-win. I pounded 3 heinekens and had a jolly time.

[gshulegaard]

> I actually like Delta's solution the best: they ask you when you check in how much you would accept to get bumped. It's fair and efficient.

This is kind of like a recruiter asking you what your current and expected salary is. I wouldn't call it fair and it is only efficient for the airline which can then use that information to bump customers with the lowest thresholds, maximizing producer (the airline) surplus.

[svachalek]

The typical way to do it is to more or less hold an auction, increasing the offer until enough people take it. Either way the people with the lowest thresholds end up getting bumped. These are the people with the least urgency and/or most need so I don't really see what's unfair about it.

[Qworg]

Hold a reverse auction instead - start high and lower it until you get just enough takers.

[thaumasiotes]

That's a terrible idea. It would be a PR disaster each and every time you tried to do it.

[ghaff]

I can just imagine holding some weird auction that 95% of people are unfamiliar with in a crowded boarding area full of annoyed passengers :-) That will end well.

[RyanCavanaugh]

I've been in boarding areas where this happened. The offer started at $400 and ended up at $1,000 by the time they got enough people to accept. No one was outraged (and I was quite happy to get 2x$1,000 in vouchers in exchange for a minor inconvenience).

[ghaff]

That's not a reverse auction.

A reverse action is offering $2K. More people than we need. OK, how about $1500? Still too many. $1000? OK, right number.

"Wait! You offered us $2K and now you're only going to give us $1K. Lying POSs."

At least that's what I think people are referring to as a reverse auction in this context. I'm not sure if that's a totally accurate description or not.

[thaumasiotes]

Do you really think "The offer started at $400 and ended up at $1,000" matches the description "start high and lower it"?

[mistermann]

Why would you start high, that's going to maximize your cost not minimize.

[koenigdavidmj]

Because people are selfish and might volunteer to get 800 for themselves rather than let some other guy get 1200 (even if 1200 is the legal maximum).

[FabHK]

No, if you start low, people might basically implicitly "conspire" to keep their hands down, and when the first "breaks" the cartel at some high price, all hands will shoot up.

Better to reverse auction until only 4 hands are left. It should end up cheaper (and fairer, incidentally, as it will closer to true preferences)

[ScottBurson]

I guess you think it's unfair because it's like a sealed-bid auction: passengers are required to submit a price without knowing other passengers' prices and with no information as to how badly the airline needs the seats. So most of the time, probably, the airline winds up paying less than it would have under the traditional system.

But in the case we're discussing here, United's offer wasn't sufficient to get them as many volunteers as they needed. So they would have had to pay someone more than usual. Seems like the right outcome to me.

[kelnos]

They ask you at check-in time, not reservation time, so they can't use low bids as a reason to further overbook a flight.

If a flight is oversold, it's oversold. They're going to bump the same customers with the same low thresholds whether they declare those thresholds when they check in or if they wait until they're at the gate.

Sure, there's a psychological difference between making an abstract dollar amount decision at check-in time (when most of the time no bumping will even have to occur anyway) vs. participating in a live auction at the gate (when it's actually a reality), the latter of which might result in higher payouts by airlines, but I don't think that's necessary, and makes the process much more inefficient.

[Asooka]

IIRC that's the proven fairest auction method. Everyone says how much they are willing to pay (in this case to be paid) for the item on auction, then you select the highest(lowest) bidder. People will say the price that best reflects their interest, because going too low would mean you don't get the item, but going too high means you pay more than the item is worth to you.

[scott00]

It depends on what price the auction winners get. If they get the price they bid, it's not optimal. If they all get the price of the most aggressive non-winner it is optimal. It's the difference between a sealed bid first price auction and a sealed bid second price auction. Not sure which way Delta does it.

In practice though, auction theory only works well with high stakes auctions with sophisticated participants (ie, Treasury debt auctions or FCC spectrum auctions). With small stakes and unsophisticated participants, people do crazy stuff, and you need more of a behavioral economics model. (As opposed to a game theoretic model, which is how the standard auction theory stuff works.)

[kelnos]

Why is optimality necessary? (And optimality for whom?) I think all that is necessary is "the people who get bumped feel like they've been compensated fairly".

Unless people blow off the dollar-amount question or later have second thoughts, then people should feel like they've been compensated fairly because they literally told the airline what they believe would be fair compensation. If they provided a bad figure, then really, that's their fault.

If we want to "stick it to the airlines" a bit more and make it equal compensation, then sure, require them to pay all bumped passengers the max bid of anyone who they actually end up bumping. That's not a terrible burden on the airline and is an easy tweak.

[scott00]

Optimality's really never necessary. But it's a good idea sometimes. The two main ways of considering optimality are maximizing revenue and "efficiency". Efficiency is a technical term roughly similar to fairness and the overall good: it tries to measure to what extent auctioned goods go to the participants who most value them.

So going for an optimal auction can be a good idea if you're trying to make the most money possible (many if not most private sector auctions), or to distribute items in an equitable way (lots of government auctions fit this category).

In this particular case, airlines have multiple goals. They want to solve the overbooking for a small amount of money, they want to minimize the time their staff spends dealing with it, and they want to keep their customers happy.

An auction's a good fit for discovering how to keep their customers happy for the least amount of money in an automated way. As to which auction... I don't think theory helps very much here. As I said, theory doesn't work well except in high stakes auctions with sophisticated participants. So you need a behavioral model of your consumers (ie, an understanding of the ways in which they behave irrationally) to figure out a good choice in this case.

[joatmon-snoo]

But customers get to choose their thresholds.

I do see the recruiter analogy, but I think there's one key difference you need to consider: Delta still has to get you on a plane at some point.

[JshWright]

American Airlines once put me in a cab from Baltimore to Philadelphia after my flight out of Baltimore got cancelled (and the only viable alternative flight was later that day in Philly).

Chicago -> Louisville is a little further than Baltimore -> Philly, but it still seems manageable. The only question is, would the crew have been "on the clock" (counting against their hourly limits).

[yardie]

That depends on what on the clock means. My spouse used to work for an airline and they had various clocks.

* 1000hour flight time clock which they couldn't exceed (cosmic radiation or something).

* They had the flight clock which is how they were compensated ie. 14 hour LHR-HKG.

* They had the break clock in flight. So crew could sleep 1-2 hours during a 12-18 hour flight.

* Rapid response standby (15 minute) was a 12 hour standby shift in the terminal.

Because the work times are so extreme cabin crew is given certain latitude in off time. Like, they may work 3 12-hour shifts and then take 3-4 days off.

Everything I've read so far has not been clear about why the crew needed to be there on a flight that was already closed (when the last seat is filled the gate is closed). There were many better options, including driving, that were available. Unloading a passenger is a logistical nightmare and most ground crew are reluctant to do it. It messes up their performance metrics but in an airline like United maybe they just don't care.

[ufmace]

> they ask you when you check in how much you would accept to get bumped

I don't like the sound of that much - how many people actually know or are prepared to think straight about how much money they would accept to get bumped when they're checking in?

I'd rather the system be that, if they need to bump someone, they start with a public offer of a modest amount, then keep increasing it until either somebody accepts or it gets so high that it's cheaper to do something else.

[ghobs91]

Keep in mind many people check in at home the day before. I flew recently and Delta offered me the option and I declined because I had to arrive at a certain time.

[michaelt]

I agree that would be a fair system as everyone, even the bumped passengers, would leave happy under that arrangement. It would certainly work well if all the passengers were already on the plane, as they'd all be there to participate in the auction.

However, if people were being bumped at check-in, or between check-in and boarding,

[ScottBurson]

The other advantage of Delta's system is efficiency. These auctions take time, delaying flights. Delta knows when they start boarding who is getting bumped.

[AnimalMuppet]

> I have even seen it suggested that the employees could even have gone by taxi, though I don't know if that was really practical.

It would have taken five hours. By itself, that's fine. But according to FAA rules, what is their status during those five hours? If they're on duty, they either need eight hours off duty once they get to Louisville, or they have a limited amount of time they can be on duty once they get there. (If that time doesn't count as on duty, of course, no problem.)

[dingaling]

As I understand it the transfer time would count as duty time because they were being moved from their report-to-work location, Chicago, to an alternative work location due to the crewing contingency.

Incidentally they were actually from another airline, Trans States Airlines of Missouri, which also flies for United and American. So they were using their status as to-become-United Express crew to make must-ride space on a Republic Airways aircraft.

[jenamety]

>I have even seen it suggested that the employees could even have gone by taxi, though I don't know if that was really practical.

I have a feeling the contract with the Pilot and FA unions squashes that idea rather quickly.

[chimeracoder]

> I have a feeling the contract with the Pilot and FA unions squashes that idea rather quickly.

Correct, the pilot and FA unions would both have forbidden using a taxi to deadhead in this scenario.

Source: friends who are flight attendants, and I've actually also gotten bitten myself by this rule personally (though obviously with far less serious consequences than this doctor).

[kelnos]

I read somewhere (unverified) that they couldn't send the crew to their destination via taxi/limo due to union regs.

Wasn't aware of that feature of Delta's check-in; that's actually really smart.

I'd be in favor of a system where involuntary bumps are banned, and the airline just takes (cash) bids for people who might volunteer, and is required to take the N lowest bids. I'd be ok with something like allowing the compensation to be vouchers if the airline is willing to make the voucher amount 2x (or something) of the cash amount.

[an_account]

At some point someone can't get on the plane. If there was no maximum amount then people could game the system and get tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe the legal maximum should be higher though.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> keep raising their offer for compensation

That's backwards from a psychological point of view, that will entice people to hold out for a larger offer later.

How they should handle it is very simple. Pick a very large number, lets say 10k, tell everyone on the plane to raise their hand if they're willing to get off the plane for 10k.

Obviously a lot (probably way more than half) will raise their hands. Now, tell everyone "keep your hand up if you're willing to get off for 7500," rinse, repeat until you get to only four people with their hands up.

I bet united could have gotten four passengers off that plane for LESS than the $800/each that they offered at the beginning, probably a LOT less and the four passengers would have been happy about it, too.

[srtjstjsj]

That's way to complicated and confusing to execute in an airport departure lounge or on an airplane

[FabHK]

Agreed, reverse auction appropriate here, and not really that complicated.

[Eric_WVGG]

re: Delta's solution, last week my mother effectively got her summer vacation flight to NYC paid for this way.

[FabHK]

That "just as easy" option with a private jet or Uber is an assumption.

There a crew resting hour regulations that might have prevented the crew from operating the next flight had they driven, and union contracts that stipulate how deadheading crew can be transported.

Again, all of those might be renegotiated at some point, but that doesn't mean there is an easy obvious alternative at hand now every time a pax refuses to deplane.

[Alupis]

Well, if we're comparing their stock price hit vs. paying for alternative transportation for the 4 employees; United could have sent all 4 employees to the ISS and back for far less[1] than the $1.6 billion market cap loss.

[1] http://www.space.com/20897-nasa-russia-astronaut-launches-20...

[maxerickson]

An unrealized change in the stock price doesn't really mean anything. Especially over the short term.

[Alupis]

> An unrealized change in the stock price doesn't really mean anything

I think we all understood that already. It's merely comparing, and accentuating, the market cap loss vs. options that would have been less costly, even if those losses aren't "real".

To that endeavor, putting these employees on a rocket ship, launching them into space, docking with the ISS, then finally returning sometime later... just for fun... all would have "hurt" less than trying to evict customers from their seats in this case.

[maxerickson]

"hurt"

That's just the point. A short term stock move doesn't hurt (or help) a company much at all.

[adwi]

Not to belabor this, but I believe it's a valid point to illustrate the scale of the potential financial repercussions for United. The damage to their brand could in fact cost far more than the short term $1.6B change in market cap.