United Airlines: Selling a plane seat twice is pure greed

Overbooking and bumping passengers is perfectly legal but in other industries, it would be fraud

It has never been easier to destroy your company in a few seconds. In 1991 Gerard Ratner wiped £500 million from the value of his eponymous brand overnight by explaining that the reason that he could sell his jewellery at such a low price was “because it’s total crap”.

A decade later, the brand director of Topman, David Shepherd, helpfully explained that the target market for their clothing was “hooligans or whatever” before ...