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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Could they have averted disaster with money? It's astounding that there were no volunteers when they offered USD 800 for a seat, 800 dollars is a nice sum. Every single passenger on that airplane thought there was a catch involved, they were getting again 800 dollars in airline vouchers, which everyone knows have big gotchas attached. The airline has a trust problem, which won't improve anytime soon.

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My understanding is that the next flight was something like the following afternoon. Business travelers are basically not going to voluntarily take a later flight at all. With respect to vouchers, most people don't travel all that much so a 1 yr. voucher isn't worth much. But offer cash (or a voucher at 2x) and you'll get people at some point.

> Business travelers are basically not going to voluntarily take a later flight at all.

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.

I once received the $500 voucher, and as an infrequent traveller, it was completely useless. The voucher went unused and expired. I wish they had offered me cash.

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.

You're lucky you got a single $500 voucher, they like to multiple smaller ones that you'll likely never use up.

Regardless of how heinous it might be to someone that a whole flight turned down $800, I can guarantee there was a number for every single person on that flight that would have averted the disaster. Now some of those numbers were probably much, much higher than others but I guarantee everyone had a number they would have agreed to (barring extenuating family circumstances or the like).

I think there would be takers even for $800 if it was cash but other commenters have pointed out that united never offered money but rather travel vouchers in small denominations that you cannot use more that one of in a single transaction.

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.

It was $800 in vouchers for other flights, not cold hard cash I believe. And even if it was actually $800, that is not worth missing a day of work unplanned for many people- the Doctor they dragged off the plane who had patients to see thought so.

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