But that costs money immediately. Forcing someone off the plane and causing a huge HR mess only costs money long-term, and it doesn't come out of my budget, so why should I care?
The cap really isn't being explained properly, it's actually almost assuredly not relevant to this guy's situation.
The actual penalty is 4x the cost of the segment. Note this is not what you paid for the ticket on your credit card divided by two (in the event of a direct round trip ticket). This guy was likely owed somewhere in the range of a few hundred bucks as a ORD-SDF segment is likely worth about $50-100 after fees are excluded.
The $1350 is simply the max, your ticket has to be worth at least $337.50 for that to matter - at which time it's against you of course.
Think you'd probably have to fire congress to make that limit and multiplier higher :)
>Compensation shall be 400% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $1,350, if the carrier does not offer alternate transportation
Stopover is defined in the law as
>>Stopover means a deliberate interruption of a journey by the passenger, scheduled to exceed 4 hours, at a point between the place of departure and the final destination.
Thus the carrier is responsible for 4x the total cost of the ticket, from Pick to destination unless the connecting layover is more than 4 hours in length
as to the point on "after fees excluded" the law requires compensation based on the full fare
fare is defined as
>>Fare means the price paid for air transportation including all mandatory taxes and fees
SO while some fees may be included, if they are optional addons like baggage fees, upgrades, drinks, meals, etc. Any mandatory fees and taxation must be included
That would be a regulator or Congress. The airline would set no cap, if they could get away with macing you to get you off the airplane, they would. "Next time, just get off the plane when we ask the first time."
When a family member, or associate of Congress gets hit with this experience, then maybe the fines get adjusted accordingly.
That's just IDB coverage, mandated by the FAA. They don't get a choice here. You will find the exact same penalties and limits for all airlines.
Voluntary compensation is entirely different - they are free to offer whatever they like to get someone off the flight. Involuntary unfortunately incentives keeping those limits low as a matter of airline policy though, of course. They can force someone off a plane for usually far less than $800 if they feel like taking a customer good will hit. This ORD-SDF flight certainly was nowhere near $1350 in IDB comp - likely less than $300 in mandatory IDB comp based on average ticket prices.
I've seen these offers go as high as $2,000 during significant service disruptions on major airlines. This is a corporate policy failure, as I'm sure the gate agent was only allowed to authorize up to $800 for that flight or something dumb.
They rolled the dice on saving a few hundred bucks against their reputation this time. I think it's safe to say they lost badly on that calculation.
I dream of a world where bump compensation is unlimited. The same people who now churn miles to fly everywhere for free would then start strategically chasing storms to get bumped from flights and make tens of thousands of dollars in compensation.
We have mileage runs and mattress runs already; why can't we have bump runs as well?
