You will be even less sympathetic when you you have to pay $50 more per ticket for a ticket that protects you from refusal of service. Of course you will end up buying the lower class ticket which does not protect you because you are really most interested in the lowest price. You will risk the 0.0009% chance of being involuntarily bumped. But you will be less sympathetic at the same time. Ain't life's contradictions great.
I don’t understand what you mean. Am I mistaken that the man would NOT have had a leg to stand on (no pun intended) if the airline had NOT allowed him to board?
Hopefully this will alert every crew now to NOT allow boarding until the overbooking is solved.
I am not worried about “refusal of service”. I think the standard practice of the airline ought to continue because of what you mean by the very small chance of the bumping.
From my understanding it wasn’t the “refusal of service” that was the issue per se—it was the fact that they ALLOWED people to board and then tried to force them off (instead of bribing them :))