What Would Randy Cohen Do?
by Sarah Breger
On Monday, at least 5,000 round-trip tickets to Israel from New York on El Al airlines were sold for under $400 (tickets usually cost $1,600). It turns out that the price was a mistake due to a glitch from a third-party company. Upon discovering the error, El Al first announced they would honor the tickets, but are now undecided and said via Twitter that they would announce their decision later today.
Should El Al honor these tickets? It’s hard not to be rooting for the ticket-holders, as this seems like a classic big corporation vs. little guy story. But is that the ethical thing to do? To get some answers, I spoke this morning with Randy Cohen, the former New York Times Ethicist and author of the new book Be Good: How to Navigate...