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> 1. Let's stop overbooking in the airline industry. The seats are already prepaid for. Who cares if a passenger shows or not? (It'd be different if they were l
by dbg31415 10y ago
> 1. Let's stop overbooking in the airline industry. The seats are already prepaid for. Who cares if a passenger shows or not? (It'd be different if they were losing revenue when a passenger doesn't show up; they aren't).
So they are loosing revenue. Here's why. A certain number of flights will be delayed, and people who are supposed to be on those connections... won't be. This means if they don't overbook, they will have more empty seats. They are pretty good with averages, and even though they are overbooked it generally works out due to the math that some people miss connections.
These people paid, but they still have to be flown to their final destination. Which means putting them on later flights... if you don't want to be told, "Hey, sorry... we can't fit you for a week..." then letting the airline fudge the numbers a bit and squeeze people in and book based on statistical analysis is fine.
Plus... the cost of all this... if they fly with more open seats... the cost of all of our tickets goes up. We say with our pocketbooks that we hate price hikes... this is why we have those stupidly small seats in the first place... everyone goes to Hipmonk and selects the cheapest flight they can find... not the fastest, not the most luxurious... the cheapest. They are doing what we want by overbooking based on statistics of who misses flights.
Anyway, what needs to happen is much more simple. Just remove the cap on the vouchers. And bid on seats. No takers at $400? Go to $600. No takers at $600. Go to $800... and so on. Eventually, even on a flight full of people heading to their mother's funeral, they will hit a number that someone is willing to take in exchange for taking a later flight.
You know how after 9/11 we reinforced the cabin doors and that was the only meaningful thing we needed to do and everything else they have spent billions upon billions of dollars for was just for show? Yeah, let's not go overboard and fuck up travel any more with regulations and more hassle. The root issue here is the abysmally small cap on vouchers.
- markdown 10y ago> Anyway, what needs to happen is much more simple. Just remove the cap on the vouchers. And bid on seats. No takers at $400? Go to $600. No takers at $600. Go to $800... and so on. Eventually, even on a flight full of people heading to their mother's funeral, they will hit a number that someone is willing to take in exchange for taking a later flight. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-offer-10000-to-flyers-give-up-seats/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-offer-10000-to-flyers-give...
- ghaff 10y agoThere are no caps on vouchers. (Except economically where you reach a point where the airlines would just rather cancel the flight--which is a rather high bar.)
- FabHK 10y agoIf overbooking were stopped, load factors would drop, prices would rise, and (unnecessary) environmental pollution would arise.