Greg wrote:

I'm curious to know what sort of cancellation policies that flight
schools and rental outfits have in place to make it highly probably
that those who schedule airplanes will actually fly them.

The school where I trained doesn't do anything, most likely for all the
good reasons mentioned in this thread.

What I suggested to them was to have their web-based scheduling system,
which was written by a student of theirs, include a feature that allows
a "backup" renter to schedule an aircraft and then emails this person
if the first renter cancels.

Seems easy to do, but I guess they are getting what they payed for this
system.

--
Peter