This. Oh so very much this. United could have avoided this whole debacle simply by not imposing price controls on the market for seats when it became a buyer rather than a seller.
This. As a business traveler, I don't know how I would justify this to my finance department and/or management. It would take too much effort to justify the change in travel plans for a shitty voucher that I'd probably never be able to redeem.
Now, I am a frequent traveller and mostly travel on business. Now again, the vouchers are useless to me.
I think the airlines should offer real cash instead of vouchers. More people would be ready to take those instead of vouchers.
I can offer $100k in thanksgiving fun bucks as well every time I screw up majorly. It will be in denominations of $50 and you can use them towards future consulting with me. My consulting starts at $100 per hour with minimum of one hour. You cannot use more that one voucher per transaction.
Status quo: offer increasingly higher flight vouchers until you hit the federally mandated rate of 400% ticket price cash rebate, capped to $1350.
Without regulations: offer increasingly higher flight vouchers until you hit 100% ticket price refund cap.
> For example, an involuntarily bumped traveler who arrives to his final destination more than two hours late (fours internationally) is entitled to an amount worth 400% of his one-way fare (capped at a maximum of $1,350).
There are no regulations forbidding United to offer more when a passenger is already seated, and that passenger thus can't be legally bumped (apart from because of safety reasons maybe).
PR disaster happens at 40,000 feet and gets recorded by smartphones. Since they're still in the air the footage hasn't been uploaded to the internet yet.
The on-board AI supercomputer makes the determination that the negativity of a plane crash would be less than if the footage leaks out so it decides to crash itself in order to maximize profits.