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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not legal.

Edit: See lawyer quote from tiatia.

In a way, there are two questions at work here.

The first question is whether you can have rent-a-cops throw a passenger off a plane after they have taken their seat. As I understand it, that is not legal.

The second question is about over-booking more broadly. After all, though there's a legal distinction between a passenger a second before boarding and a second after, from a customer service standpoint they're still denied the seat they were promised. Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be?

Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be?

I assume there are weasel words in the contract(airline ToS) to allow this.

There are full fare tickets that can be cancelled/refunded, or changed to other flights, at any time. So there's always some amount of no-shows. So they don't really "know" that they cannot honor the oversells. There's also equipment swaps to smaller aircraft, flights cancelled for mechanical issues that then moves passengers to other planes, etc.

Denied boarding is actually pretty rare, happens to about 0.1% of passengers: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...

The other approach would be to never overbook, but if you're the only airline not overbooking, your margins will be lower. Empty seats don't make money.

In that case, a missed flight should result in the passenger having to buy a brand new ticket. That doesn't happen: a missed flight is generally put on the next flight free or at a very nominal fee.

Imagine the outrage if someone missed their flight by 10 minutes and they had to buy an entirely new ticket. If airlines did that, they wouldn't need to overbook though. Alternatively, instead of overbooking, the airline just doubles ticket prices.

Overboooking probably accounts for most of these incidents, but in this particular case they had to switch to a slightly smaller plane due to mechanical issues. So eliminating overbooking won't fix this problem completely.

However, having a policy of not forcing passengers to relinquish seats they've already sat down in would...

I'm basically against overbooking, but playing devil's advocate: is it that hugely different from fractional reserve banking? They claim you can get your money out at any time, but that's not the case if everyone tries at once.

IIRC, there are safeguards in place to make sure there isn't a run on the bank.

I'm fairly certain retail banks can borrow from the FED to mitigate that.

They weren't rent-a-cops, they were/are state employees, and of course they can remove people from planes if those people are trespassing, what makes you think they couldn't?

Maybe not. But IANAL. However, why can't they bid for passengers to fly later. After boarding, they'd probably just need to pay more.

I'm getting tired of people claiming that United can't break their own contracts legally. Of course they can, and no it's not "illegal". Why is that the bar everyone look to for whether or not they should be doing something?

If you believe what United did in this case or the case of the doctor being dragged out is illegal, please continue to pay close attention to what happens in the latter case, as I'm sure it will continue to be reported on for at least the foreseeable future.

Specifically, notice the distinct lack of criminal charges.

OK, breaking contracts isn't criminal. Just grounds for legal action. But assault and lying to police officers, those are criminal offenses.

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