What I don’t get is the supposed reason why airlines overbook.
Supposedly it’s because there are almost always some people that don’t show up for a flight and the companies don’t like to fly with empty seats. But haven’t the no-shows prepaid for those tickets, and if they simply fail to show up don’t they forfeit their fares?
So how are the airlines losing money because of no shows?
What surprised me is that the ticket one purchases is not a contract. You'd think it would be, and the airline is obligated to provide the seat you booked and paid for.
This is a perfect example of corporate power run amuck.
Nope.
Many people do not show for a variety of reasons but, you can use the same ticket for another flight, before some deadline in the future but, you will pay a $75-$150 rebooking fee.
On a flight that short it doesn’t make sense to miss the flight because the booking fees will be nearly the price of ticket.
Like the price of a ticket from San Francisco to Las Vegas. That ticket for being herded into a cattle car is currently $57 bucks “Roundtrip” on JetBlue and it’s a horrible ride with “Nonstop”, which I always love.
Or you can take Virgin for $109 Roundtrip and who doesn’t like Virgin?
For a good kick in the ass you can Fly the Fit Club Special on United Airlines for $170 - $289 and they can even “re-accomodate” you for well, any reason at all.
If it was a west coast/east coast ticket and I had something pressing come up that had to be dealt with, I would rebook.
Hotels, airlines, car rentals, etc all book with potential for overage. Trips change, get cancelled, etc, and they have carefully crafted formulas to maximize revenue/occupancy/etc. Business traveller regularly change flights do to schedule changes, etc. The airlines are going to account for those fluctuations.
Typically, they find takers for the free travel dollars, but even their max $$ in this case was only $800. That’s barely enough to cover a vacation for 2. They should have raised the level vs. demanding fliers off the plane (even before the unnecessary use of force). Someone would have responded to $1000+ a free 1st class upgrade...surely. All this to accommodate their employees, too. That’s the worst part of it. If they had simply too many paying customers, that’s one thing, but the sure disregard for customers over employees flying to the destination is utterly impossible to comprehend.
So how are the airlines losing money because of no shows?
Exactly.
They will make more on the flight due to less weight in passenger and baggage equaling less fuel expended and less cost of food/drink consumed. (assuming coach, not first class)
The over-booking appears to allow them to sell keep selling the seats for higher fares and then "re-accommodating" the cheaper fares to another flight.
United DOES NOT give "cash" when you are bumped. They give a voucher towards another flight.
I’ve had the same question for years. Can’t remember the last time I was on an “empty” plane. They’re packed to bursting. From overbooked flights I’ve certainly garnered a lot of free flight vouchers though. The last flight of the day from Denver to Cody was always a guaranteed voucher; ALWAYS overbooked (and surprise: it’s United).
Many moons ago, I booked flights for United.
Airlines overbook to maximize profits by making sure every seat is occupied for the flight. When there is an overbooking at the time of flight, they would start offering deals for passengers to take the next flight. This might be upgrades or even hotel rooms. Usually fixes the problem and it is done before boarding takes place. If no one volunteers to leave the flight they will eventually pull someone off. It is a good time to haggle with them for a better offer, like several upgrades on several flights..
Something went really wrong here that they allowed an overbooked flight to board, as it is hard to get a passenger out of a seat when settled in.
The big no no is to allow the flight to undock late, which carries severe penalties for the airlines, as their gate rental is quite specific as to when the the plan has to be clear of the gate. Once on the runway, who cares, they will let the plane sit for 5 hours but it MUST clear the gate by the allotted time. And the plane can’t leave the gate overbooked.
The attendants at the gate are the ones blamed for any late gate departures and can easily be fired so they must have panicked and brought in some muscle to remove the unlucky chosen passenger.
I’ve wondered about that myself. If I ever miss my flight I figured I would be out the money. So this is about Reselling those seats?
They are only losing the "extra" money.
VDB (voluntarily denied boarding) is generally a win-win-win. The airline seats a higher paying or priority passenger, someone is happy to get vouchers, and someone is happy to get on the plane. I absolutely LOVE VDB, and will volunteer on full flights even before the announcement. For example, a few years back we got bumped twice on the way to Hawaii, gave up 2 days in paradise, but got $2,600 in vouchers and went again for free the next year.
IDB is a quite different case which is usually a win-lose-mixed deal. It's expensive for the airlines, bad fio one customer, but good for another.
Airlines are a very difficult business. They often lose billions. Scheduling planes, gates, food, fuel, flight staff, ground staff, seats, and more requires powerful computers and algorithms. The difficulty is compounded by weather, mechanical issues, staff sickness. Ticket prices are ridiculously cheap. I don't know if it's true, but I read overbooking has saved $100 billion over 30 years. Some of that has become profit, but surely most of it has resulted in lower ticket prices.
It's also worth noting that some of the problem may be over-regulation. Apparently airlines are constrained in the most compensation they can offer bumped passengers. This regulation should be eliminated. This would turn IVB into a win-win-mixed, where both passengers would be pleased, but the airline would have happier customers but lose more money.
Let’s come back down to reality.
It isn’t that “they don’t like to fly with empty seats.”
Those empty seats can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars on a long flight.
The policy doesn’t result from some mere whim.
But they need to offer adequate compensation when this sort of thing arises, and push comes to shove it should be their employees taking a later flight with this sort of incident.
This was incompetent on every level.
Most no-shows are caused by flight delays in an earlier leg, which are also ultimately the fault of the carrier, or just uncontrollable circumstances, like weather.
In most cases, the carrier will put you on another flight without your forfeiting all or most of your original ticket.
There may be some charges applied, but certainly not full fare.
But I get why they overbook. To a point. Most probably over-overbook, and United is bad about that.
“So how are the airlines losing money because of no shows?”
They’re losing money they might have gotten if they could scam two people into paying for the same seat.