4 ms·
This kind of thing goes way back and used to be much easier. Over-booking of flights used to be a huge problem back in the 90's and earlier. You'd get on the p
by yodon 6y ago
This kind of thing goes way back and used to be much easier.
Over-booking of flights used to be a huge problem back in the 90's and earlier. You'd get on the plane, someone would be in your seat already, and that's when you found out you didn't get to fly on that flight.
Airlines figured out this pissed people off and started counting tickets before letting people onto flights. If they had too many people waiting to board a flight, they would make an announcement and start offering free stuff to people willing to be bumped or take a later flight (this still happens in rare circumstances today but used to happen on most flights for a few years).
I remember listening to a gate agent threatening to call the cops on a college age guy who was picking up his third free ticket of the week for accepting being bumped off an Oakland to Las Vegas flight. He'd apparently figured out that that flight was always overbooked (which wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist given the high rate of overbooking at the time), and the only reason he got caught was the same agent kept getting assigned to work the counter for that flight often enough to remember his face.
Interestingly, I also flew on a nearly empty flight once during that era. The pilot came on the loud speakers and said "the next time you are wondering why flights are over booked, remember this flight - this plane was booked to 120% capacity (or some other number well over 100%) for this trip."
- thehappypm 6y agoFor a flight to have gone from 120% to nearly empty would mean that some large group didn't show up. Maybe an entire tour bus was delayed by a flat tire or something. Statistically speaking, a hundred people simultaneously missing their flight is vanishingly unlikely.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Plough_Jogger 6y agoMany corporate travelers can book and re-book with no change fees, so this happens more than you would expect. The most common reason I've seen is a large corporation cancelling or rescheduling an all-hands / quarterly meeting that everyone above a certain level (e.g. directors / VPs) from non-HQ offices travels to HQ to attend. For an Oakland to Las Vegas flight, I'd guess a conference, music festival, or sporting event was cancelled.
- nightcracker 6y ago> Statistically speaking Statistics generally (there are exceptions of course) makes very broad assumptions about independence and random selection of your samples. For a group of people as correlated as having the same destination at exactly the same time using the same airplane I would be very wary of applying any statistics at all, even ignoring the possibility of a large group. Hundreds of otherwise independent people can decide to not show up simultaneously due to terrorist attacks, corona, a cheaper alternative, a conference being cancelled, etc.
- thehappypm 6y agoI think you are restating my point.
- kebman 6y agoBayesian statistics might show a more interesting answer, though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- BlewisJS 6y agoWhat could they possibly call the cops about? "This man keeps accepting our offers"?
- SllX 6y agoYou can call the cops about anything on anyone. That doesn’t mean they’ll make an arrest.
- jedberg 6y ago> and the only reason he got caught Got caught doing what exactly? Booking tickets on a flight? If he wasn't using fake names or anything, it sounds like he was just trading his time for free airfare.
- swinglock 6y agoHe also saved one person that actually needed to be on the flight from being kicked out. Maybe the agents ego didn't like that.
- driverdan 6y agoOverbooking never went away, it's still a problem. In the US there are laws they have to follow for bumping compensation now.
- Gibbon1 6y agoI caught an airline bumping the whole flight I was on once. They told US that there were mechanical issues. Then herded everyone to another terminal. 10 minutes later they lead another large group onto the plane and it took off.
- dheera 6y ago> I remember listening to a gate agent threatening to call the cops on a college age guy who was picking up his third free ticket of the week for accepting being bumped off I hope the cops did nothing? It was the airline's fault for overbooking and they offered bump compensation and the guy took it. It sounds legal to me. If the airline wanted to avoid this they could easily have done that by not overbooking.
- Traster 6y agoSorry this isn't a direct reply to your story, but I'm interested if anyone knows, does overbooking happen regularly in Europe? Becuase I'm in the UK and I've literally never heard of anyone getting bumped from a flight. I'm sure it happens occasionally, but is there just a massive divide between the US and EU here? Is there a systemic issue with regulation, is it just consumer attitude, or is the EU actually the same as the US?
- ProZsolt 6y agoYes, it's common. It happened to me once and some of my colleagues as well. I think they don't overbook as much as in the US. They try to avoid bumping off passengers, because the cost of doing it is much higher. They can't just give you an upgrade ticket. They have to reimburse all occurring cost and they have to pay an additional 250-600 EUR compensation depending on the length of the flight.[1] [1]: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights/air/index_en.htm#compensation-cancellation-3 https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
- vinay427 6y agoThere is a possibly looser regulation on this in the US as well: https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/bumping-oversales https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer... I've seen airlines offering compensation worth well more than these minimums, however. Anecdotally it seems fairly common to get hundreds of dollars for a relatively short domestic flight.
- CloudNetworking 6y agoI've seen it twice with EasyJet (BCN - LGW)
- fnordfnordfnord 6y agoI was offered hotel, rebooking, and spending money to give up my seat on a flight from Schipol to NYC once; it was about 15 years ago though.
- Seaphyre 6y ago