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Why Do Airlines Overbook? (bbc.com)
From a report on BBC: A common overbooking problem on a United Airlines flight on Sunday ended with a man being bloodied and dragged from his seat and an already troubled airline earning more bad press. How did it all go so wrong? Overbooking on flights happens all the time. Empty seats cost airlines money, so they offset the number of passengers who miss flights by selling too many tickets. In this case, the problem arose because United decided at the last minute to fly four members of staff to a connection point and needed to bump four passengers to make way for them. When there's an overbooking issue the first step is to offer an inducement to the passengers to take a later flight. [...] Of the 613 million people who flew on major US carriers in 2015, 46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%.
That's the beginning and the end of this conversation.
The only way to get airlines to stop doing it is to make it unprofitable to do so either through fines and/or regulations which increase the compensation for those bumped from flights to the point where it's not worth it to do.
It may be less than 0.008% but it's still forty six thousand human beings.
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Flying is an awful experience these days because market drives price optimization above anything else. A lot of it is driven by "find cheapest" aggregators and "you must fly cheapest" corporate policies. This is actually not in the best interest of consumers. Actually, vast majority of consumers would be better off with slightly more expensive but consumer-focused service.
Security theater at the airports, outrageous fees, cramped seats, inadequate cleaning between flights. Why would anyone fly unless they absolutely had to?
Overbooking incidents are resolved at check-in counters. This is an incident of someone being removed from a plane to make way for employees. Not only is this not overbooking, but it's also a mindbogglingly dickish move by an airline to de-board someone already sitting and expecting to reach their destination, even more dickish that it wasn't voluntary at all.
I really wish I could boycot United, but as have already done so for years there's not much more I can do. Frankly these types of incidents only seem to happen with one carrier over and over again.
Last time I checked in at a KLM service desk they told me they were overbooked and they gave me the choice of flying 30min later and paid me €200 for my troubles. Quite a different response then "these people will need to get off the plane to make space for an employee of ours".
United should be fined hugely for this, the four removed should sue. The staff involved fired, the execs making that policy fired.
But nothing will happen, i normally fly them, but will look elsewhere.
Yes and it seems many others here are blindly commenting and don't understand what actually happened. This wasn't an overbooking scenario. This was a scenario where passengers had been cleared, boarded and seated. Then another flight crew needed to board to make a flight for the next day. No one volunteered, so they played Hunger Games with the passengers. One of the ones selected was a Dr that had patients to see in the morning and thus his refusal.
United Airlines then turned in to President Snow and had a 69 year old man beaten and drug, yes, drug, (not carried as some outfits want to say), off the plane over it.
United could have easily booked this crew later or sent them by other means. They chose to violently remove a 69 year old man like he was brandishing a weapon or threatening people.
So, people carrying on about overbooking can get bent as that's not what happened. This wasn't denial of boarding. It was violent eviction.
United is going to end up paying for this event, one way or another.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
And yet they don't refund the tickets for the people who don't show up. What other industry is allowed to sell commodities twice? Usually that is considered fraud....
"Empty seats cost airlines money" not if those seats are already paid for. This total BS. If the seat is paid for then less weight saves them money. Overbooking is pure greed. They know the average percentage of people who will miss the flight and they overbook to make more money but sometimes the people do not miss the flight and they do not have enough seats. It is pure greed and lies. If I have paid for a seat it should not be theirs to sell again as what they normally do is just get more strict about the check in time to reject people if they are going to have a problem. You arrive at check in a minute late (I was rejected 3 minutes late once) and they get hard arsed because they already have someone sitting in your seat. They have sold it and made money from something they had already sold to you.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Actually, TFA is a bit off if they're referring to the United Airlines incident, since it wasn't simple overbooking (which would mean passengers would be denied at the gate). In that case it was four UA aircrew that needed to get a flight at the last minute, and UA decided that they needed someone to be voluntold off the plane itself.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Security and police are just about never f*cked. The first rule of a police state is that you don't throw the police under the bus. They may get bad press but where the rubber meets the road, or perhaps I should say where the baton meets the suspect, they still have free rein. Virtually all suspensions result in a slap on the wrist are are in effect paid vacations.
The real question is why we let corporations use the government to enforece rules they set. In this case whe have a company using jackbooted thugs, paid for by your taxes, to abuse your peer. This is just another illustration of where power really lies. This is not a democracy. It is a corporate oligarchy.
Silence is a state of mime.
They didn't get 3 volunteers - United is wording it in a misleading way by saying "voluntarily left" the other 3 people did not volunteer, they were told to leave but left without being dragged out.
250.2a Policy regarding denied boarding. In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily.
Obviously, IANAL, but reading the source code (the CFR), it appears they yanked this guy off to make room for flight crew. Do crew have a confirmed reserved space?
No one except airlines WANTS THEM TO OVERBOOK, because the only entity that overbooking benefits is the carrier. Overbooking does not benefit the customer (no, overbooking does not "help them keep fares low", competition does). The obvious solution in this case was to continue offering higher and higher incentives until they reached the point where people were willing to give up their seats. Dragging a bloody paying passenger off the plane is going to end up costing them far more than just raising the offer until they got enough volunteers.
In this case overbooking wasn't even necessarily the case. The plane was fully loaded when 4 employees showed up and told the gate agent that they needed to be on that plane, because it was the last plane to their destination that day. They weren't booked for the flight, they just showed up and said they needed to be on it. Overbooking doesn't even apply to this case. The problem is how United handled the situation, by deciding to call in the police and drag a paying customer off the plane instead of just offering whatever it took to get 4 people to agree.
This whole whine session is silly.
I'd like to see if you still feel that way if you decide that getting to your destination is worth more than $800 to you and instead the police come on board, bloody your mouth, and drag you off the plane.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
According to the contract, it was within UA's rights to remove the passenger from the plane. However, it was a royal PR fuckup to do it in the way that they did, and consequentially, they deserve whatever fallout comes from this.