The share of passengers denied boarding rose until the late 1990s to about 1 in 500, but it’s fallen to about one in a thousand
.. involuntary denied boardings are affecting about six passengers per 100,000.
.. But a free-market solution would require the airlines to raise the compensation offer indefinitely until somebody accepted the offer. It’s a simple matter of fairness: If airlines are legally permitted to make false promises—and to overbook a flight is, essentially, to promise a service that cannot be fulfilled—they ought to pay market price to compensate people for the unfulfilled promise. Instead, airlines are permitted to practice a kind of bizarro capitalism, in which they can overbook with impunity and throw people off the plane after they reject an arbitrary fee.
.. airline industry is sheltered from both antitrust regulation and litigation.
.. when fuel prices fell last year, as The Atlantic’s Joe Pinsker (who edited this story and who has a relative who works at United) has written, airlines spent the savings on stock buybacks rather than pass them to consumers.
.. what recourse do they have against the company? Very little. In the last decade, class-action lawsuits have become endangered thanks to a series of Supreme Court rulings that have undercut consumer rights. Disputes over fine-print regulation are increasingly likely to be settled in arbitration, without a judge or jury
Doctor Dragged From United Flight Suffered Concussion, Attorney Says
Passenger also lost two teeth and his nose was broken, lawyer says
.. Dr. Dao as a loving father of five and a proud Vietnamese immigrant who came to the U.S. amid the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Mr. Demetrio said Dr. Dao told him his mistreatment on Sunday was more terrifying than that escape.