[CaptainZapp]

To be more accurate: It's less about cancelled reservations, but mostly about no-shows.

People buying full-fare tickets don't incur a penalty if they just don't show up for the flight. Most tickets, nowadays are anyway non-cancellable (except, sometimes for a hefty fee) and non-refundable.

At times the flight from Tel Aviv to Zurich could be overbooked by as muchas 60 seats. I know this because my sister worked at (now defunct) Swissair.

Personally I don't feel this to be a scammy concept, provided that the airline

- Rebooks you onto the next available flight. If necessary with a competitor and

- Compensates fairly and in cash and coughs up for hotel acommodation, transportation and food if necessary

[rhino369]

Plus even non-cancellable tickets can be moved for ~150 dollar fee. And most airlines will let you fly standby if you arrive too late for your flight, at no cost.

If they didn't do overbooking, then missing your flight is a huge opportunity cost of them. They wouldn't be so quick to let you just move it last minute or fly standby.

The real problem with that united PR debacle was that the passenger was roughed up by security. But overbooking is probably a positive for flyers.

[Sleeep]

The United flight wasn't even overbooked either, all paying passengers had a seat. They booted paying passengers for crew members.

IMO the correct thing to do is do everything they can do to find alternative arrangements for crew member transportation in that case. I think paying customers should be the priority.

Another mistake made was allowing the passenger to board and then removing him. Bumped passengers should not be allowed to board in the first place.

[CaptainZapp]

  They booted paying passengers for crew members.

They argued that this would result into a cancelled flight the next morning if they wouldn't have flown the crew, since no crew would be available. This may, or may not be the case. But if it really was that urgent they could have chartered a private plance for the crew. At ~300 miles even renting a car may have been feasible (this may have cut into the mandatory rest period of the crew, though).

  Another mistake made was allowing the passenger to board and then removing him

Precisely that! You just can't have paying passengers board a plane to then kick them out. If the flight is really oversold you should find volounteers at the gate and - if necessary - auction the bumping off. If nobody wants to be bumped for 800$ then raise the price. It's not my impression that they really did that. They just selected four passengers, stormed the plane and essentially told them "off!" When Dr. Dao refused (which I can understand, if you have patients potentially waiting for month to get to see the doctor) they gave him the "Nice face, would be a shame if something happens to it" treatment.

Oh, and offering the amount in cash and not in some vouchers, which probably come with so much fine print and restrictions to be virtually useless would probably help too.

[Sleeep]

Right, I think that the right thing to do was either pay to book the crew members with another airline (or private plane) or rent them a car. People have also said hiring a limo to transport that distance cost about a thousand, I don't know if that is true or not though, I've never hired a limo.

Thing is, I'm not sure those arrangements were actually considered by United though, they seem very short sided in general.

I didn't really consider resting times might be an issue though.

The important part is don't board a passenger THEN kick them off. If they are bumped, they shouldn't ever board.