Julian Simon's "Almost Practical Solution to Airline Overbooking"

The problem of airline overbooking has made headline over the last week. An obvious question this gives rise to is, how do we deal with the problem?

Timothy Taylor at the Conversable Economist blog gives us this explanation of economist Julian Simon's method for dealing with the problem of overbooking. Simon wrote a short note, "An Almost Practical Solution to Airline Overbooking" (pdf), in the May 1968 issue of the Journal of Transport Economics and Policy.

Here's how Simon described the idea in 1968:

Perhaps the reader has suffered a fit of impotent rage at being told that he could not board an aeroplane for which he held a valid ticket. The explanation is clear, and no angry letter to the president of the airline will rectify the mistake, for mistake it was not. The airline gambles on a certain number of cancellations, and therefore sometimes sells more tickets than there are seats. Naturally there are sometimes more seat claimants than seats.

The solution is simple. All that need happen when there is overbooking is that an airline agent distributes among the ticket-holders an envelope and a bid form, instructing each person to write down the lowest sum of money he is willing to accept in return for waiting for the next flight. The lowest bidder is paid in cash and given a ticket for the next flight. All other passengers board the plane and complete the flight to their destination.

All parties benefit, and no party loses. All passengers either complete their flight or are recompensed by a sum which they value more than the immediate completion of the flight. And the airlines could also gain, because they would be able to overbook to a higher degree than at present, and hence fly their planes closer to seat capacity. ...

But of course this scheme will not be taken up by the airlines. Why? Their first response will probably be "The administrative difficulties would be too great". The reader may judge this for himself. Next they will suggest that the scheme will not increase net revenue. But the a priori arguments to the contrary make the scheme worth a trial, and the trial would cost practically nothing and would require no commitment.

What are the real reasons why this scheme will not be adopted? Probably that "It just isn't done", because such an auction does not seem decorous; it smacks of the pushcart rather than the one price store; it is "embarrassing" and "crass", i.e., frankly commercial, like "being in trade" in Victorian England.

It does seem better than beating people up and dragging them off planes.