[bonzini]

It's not at least up to $1,350. They can offer _as little as_ $1,350 even if the ticket costs more than $1,350/4 = $337.50, but there's no upper limit.

Apparently their policy is to never go above 4x the cost of the ticket (they said it's $800 in this case, your computation in another message said $1030, but airline fares are really complex). That's a valid policy. But they should definitely have offered cash instead of vouchers.

[masondixon]

> But they should definitely have offered cash instead of vouchers.

They are allowed to offer vouchers or free flights.

https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights

Should the law be different. Maybe. But the law is the law.

[bonzini]

Yes, but only for voluntary bumping. Involuntary bumping requires the airline to pay cash if the passenger insists on that. It seems reasonable to offer cash before moving to involuntary bumping. Anyone who can read would request cash rather than vouchers worth the same $$$ (a $2000 voucher might be different, but they didn't offer that, either).

And even if they didn't, they could have drawn say 10 passengers instead of 4, and given them "a written statement describing their rights and explaining how the carrier decides who gets on an oversold flight and who doesn't" as mentioned in the page you linked, They might very well have found 4 people who would have refused a voucher but would have accepted a $800 check.

Or skip the stupid lottery and go with involuntary bumping of the 4 people who checked in last. Well, pretty much anything but what they did.

[FireBeyond]

> Involuntary bumping requires the airline to pay cash if the passenger insists on that.

Not even "insists on it", they are required to pay cash or check, only, for IDB.

Their "dirty little secret" (which makes it sound 'naughty', as opposed to the more accurate 'illegal') is that for many years they've been offering vouchers in this situation.

And then there's this argument that the gate agent came on to the plane, and asked for volunteers, and then having no/not enough volunteers began involuntarily denying boarding, and the argument is that "having boarded, any removal of a passenger is involuntary, because by definition/law, voluntary denial doesn't involve demanding passengers give up seats after boarding or refusing to fly the aircraft".

[FireBeyond]

"Those travelers who don't get to fly are frequently entitled to denied boarding compensation in the form of a check or cash."

Eh. No. We're talking about the point at which this became Involuntary.

The same site you link to has no mention of vouchers when it's involuntary, which is also the subject of my initial calculation and quote.

As this article, and many others have stated, this is but one of the issues with the handling of this situation, that United (though not the only airline by any means) has been quite happy to perpetuate the myth that airlines "only" have to offer vouchers. They can choose to offer vouchers for voluntary denial.

They are REQUIRED to ONLY offer check or cash for IDB situations.