[nana13]

As a retired Flt. attendant of over 30 years, and also worked the gates in layoff times, I am ashamed of the treatment of this passenger, one this flt. was not over sold, two the priority psgs. were dead heading crew members, which could have been placed on another flt.(or delay their flt, until they arrived, or cancelled there flt. this was a scheduling problem, not a passenger problem) The Gate agents, did not contact crew scheduling to see if other arrangements could be made, I question the gate agents, if they went thru the cabin to count the empty seats. Any standby passengers who was placed on the flt. would be the first removed,(did they check the standby list) An announcement offering a monetary round trip ticket to any domestic destination that United flew, should have been offered, plus a re-accom on the next flt. and sometimes a monetary add, such as $500 United dropped the ball on this one The CEO, is just another Golden Parachuter, looking to retire, Believe me folks this is not the first nor the last of these incidents, I flew for TWA and our number one concern was customer service. When we went under I saw the demise of the airline industry,and customer service, you might as well take a Grayhound Bus. I have tried every major and i now fly South West, any chance I have, great airline with great customer service. Just be aware, that you can be bumped anytime the airline feels it can getaway with it.

[biker1]

I believe you are engaging in a lot of guess work as to what actually went on. By the way, Southwest is one of the leaders in unvoluntary bumping. I do fly them a lot, however.

Originally Posted by nana13

As a retired Flt. attendant of over 30 years, and also worked the gates in layoff times, I am ashamed of the treatment of this passenger, one this flt. was not over sold, two the priority psgs. were dead heading crew members, which could have been placed on another flt.(or delay their flt, until they arrived, or cancelled there flt. this was a scheduling problem, not a passenger problem) The Gate agents, did not contact crew scheduling to see if other arrangements could be made, I question the gate agents, if they went thru the cabin to count the empty seats. Any standby passengers who was placed on the flt. would be the first removed,(did they check the standby list) An announcement offering a monetary round trip ticket to any domestic destination that United flew, should have been offered, plus a re-accom on the next flt. and sometimes a monetary add, such as $500 United dropped the ball on this one The CEO, is just another Golden Parachuter, looking to retire, Believe me folks this is not the first nor the last of these incidents, I flew for TWA and our number one concern was customer service. When we went under I saw the demise of the airline industry,and customer service, you might as well take a Grayhound Bus. I have tried every major and i now fly South West, any chance I have, great airline with great customer service. Just be aware, that you can be bumped anytime the airline feels it can getaway with it.

[Steve9930]

Originally Posted by biker1

Involuntary bumping happens at the rate of 1 in 10,000. It is a relatively rare event. I have been voluntarily bumped numerous times and was well compensated for giving up my seat. In most instances, the delay in reaching my final destination was a couple of hours. In a couple of cases, I wound up on more direct flights that actually got me to my final destination before my original flight. My all time favorite was when traveling on a free ticket, via frequent flyer miles, I agreed to be bumped twice and got home with only a modest delay from the original flight. In my experience, the compensation was well worth the typically small delay in getting to my final destination.

A lot of airline travel is nothing like a cruise. From experience, I can tell you that a lot of business travel changes at the last minute. With the exception of some shuttle flights where you essentially paid when you were on the flight, the vast majority (perhaps all) of my business travel has been paid at booking for the last 30 years+, not when I got to the airport. You can vote with your pocketbook and not travel on airlines that overbook but the net result is you won't be doing much traveling.

The overbooking process works very well from my experience. The reason it works well is that there are people who are more than happy to give up their seats for compensation so the number of involuntary bumpings is small. Obviously it pays for the airlines to do this otherwise they wouldn't. I have flown several million miles and I have never been involuntarily bumped. I have, however, been involuntarily bumped from a hotel. They paid for a cab ride down the street to another hotel and paid for the night. I was back the next night where I should be.

There is no reason the airlines need to over book, none, Nada. You can run a airline just like a cruise. I traveled for 30 years in my job and I also took the freebees but the fact is you can use a different business model and it works just fine. There are a few airlines that do. With the proper planning you do not need to change travel plans on business and if you do, then this is where the insurance takes over. Its also when the stand bye's get a deal.

[Steve9930]

Originally Posted by Madelaine Amee

Today the attorney for this man and his daughter (he has five children) were on TV talking about the extensive damage he sustained during the dragging incidence. They were throwing around numbers for damages and someone said it is quite possible United could be looking at a $10M suit. I am sure there will be much more discussed on the evening news.

We will never know the number but it would have paid for a lot of private shuttles from Chicago to Louisville.

[Steve9930]

Here's another wrinkle starting to come to light. It appears since there was no threat coming from this passenger its a civil matter. Means the Police had no authority to remove the passenger. Like I indicated earlier, this man and his family will never have to work another day in their life. United and the City of Chicago should get out their check books and don't be insulting when the write down he number.

[Edjkoz]

I agree that no airline has to overbook any more. Most tickets sold are non refundable. If the passenger doesn't show, the airline still gets paid. For the very few full fare, refundable tickets, the airline could tack a penalty onto it for a no show.

[biker1]

I am totally amazed at people who apparently have no qualifications making such statements. Please state your qualifications and evidence to support such a statement. Otherwise you are just stating unsupported opinion. Don't you get it that the number of involuntary bumpings is 1 in 10,000?

Originally Posted by Edjkoz

I agree that no airline has to overbook any more. Most tickets sold are non refundable. If the passenger doesn't show, the airline still gets paid. For the very few full fare, refundable tickets, the airline could tack a penalty onto it for a no show.

[biker1]

Allegiant is an order of magnitude smaller than the largest airlines and certainly has it's share of consumer complaints. Since you are not in the airline industry, you really have no idea what you are talking about and you have yet to provide any evidence to support your claim. For example, how much does overbooking add to their bottom line? If overbooking increases the percentage of seats filled and their bottom line it is hardly a dated business model. One more time, the chances of being involuntarily bumped is 1 in 10,000. This is a rare event. What happened with United was the results of bad decision making by the passenger, first and foremost, and the airport security people. Extrapolating this isolated event to overbooking in general is absurd. I prefer to deal in facts and not factless speculation. Since there is apparently nothing that you can add that is fact based, I don't see any need to continue to respond to opinions.

Originally Posted by Steve9930

Business is business. You do not need to do over booking in the airline industry. Its an old out dated business model. Allegiant is one such airline that has thrown that model away. They are very profitable and do not over book. If you get paid for the seat whether its is filled or not you make your profit on the flight. If you think the airlines actually know what they are doing I guess you missed watching the video.

[Steve9930]

Originally Posted by biker1

Allegiant is an order of magnitude smaller than the largest airlines and certainly has it's share of consumer complaints. Since you are not in the airline industry, you really have no idea what you are talking about and you have yet to provide any evidence to support your claim. For example, how much does overbooking add to their bottom line? If overbooking increases the percentage of seats filled and their bottom line it is hardly a dated business model. One more time, the chances of being involuntarily bumped is 1 in 10,000. This is a rare event. What happened with United was the results of bad decision making by the passenger, first and foremost, and the airport security people. Extrapolating this isolated event to overbooking in general is absurd. I prefer to deal in facts and not factless speculation. Since there is apparently nothing that you can add that is fact based, I don't see any need to continue to respond to opinions.

Your mistake is your looking at it from the old worn out perspective. Their perspective. The first question to answer is why do they over book? I know the answer but do you? They look at a seat that is empty as a loss of revenue. That is what the airline will tell you. With the way they run the business that assumption is not correct. Its propaganda for people to swallow. Its not correct because today they charge you a change fee. Miss a flight and the number you will be charged covers the cost of the empty seat. You also pay up front for that seat. No more book and pay at the airport. Which was the real reason over booking started in the first place. Also not all seats are equally charged for the flight. The first seats at the lower price pay for the flight. They know how many seats they need to sell to break even. The cheep seats pay for the flight. The other more expensive seats make the profit. You make the airline smile.

[DonH57]

I like Southwest Airlines new slogan, " We beat our competitors, not you!".

[biker1]

First of all, I am not making any mistake because I don't pretend to know the airline business. Your mistake, on the other hand, is pretending you know more than the people doing yield management for the airlines. They, as well as other service industries with a fixed and time volatile inventory, overbook because it increases their bottom line based, in part, on the past history of the flight. Airlines could stop overbooking tomorrow if they wanted. To assume they continue doing something that provides no economic benefit is silly. To suggest they should just drop the business model they have today is silly and naive. It is easy to criticize when you don't know the details.

Overbooking is based on statistical modeling. For each flight, they model how many people will actually show up (and yes, many of the no-shows will pay a penalty to use their non-refundable ticket) and by how much they should overbook. Perfect overbooking would result in paying no compensation for voluntary or involuntary bumps but would yield more revenue than if they didn't overbook via a paying customer in every seat (and yes, each seat may have a different price because of their yield management strategy). To suggest that overbooking is a vestige of the past is naive. Yield management with overbooking is a sophisticated optimization problem. They are looking to maximize the revenue for each flight and overbooking is part of the strategy. The point you probably miss is that overbooking only makes sense when you have a statistical expectation of no-shows, which the major carriers apparently do because of business travel (I used to change flights quite often). You can claim that you don't overbook, as part of a marketing strategy to the uninformed, when your client base has a low no-show rate or you lack the yield management capabilities to do it effectively. Why you would care whether an airline overbooks, when considering the very low average involuntary bumping rate of 1 in 10,000, is beyond me.

Originally Posted by Steve9930

Your mistake is your looking at it from the old worn out perspective. Their perspective. The first question to answer is why do they over book? I know the answer but do you? They look at a seat that is empty as a loss of revenue. That is what the airline will tell you. With the way they run the business that assumption is not correct. Its propaganda for people to swallow. Its not correct because today they charge you a change fee. Miss a flight and the number you will be charged covers the cost of the empty seat. You also pay up front for that seat. No more book and pay at the airport. Which was the real reason over booking started in the first place. Also not all seats are equally charged for the flight. The first seats at the lower price pay for the flight. They know how many seats they need to sell to break even. The cheep seats pay for the flight. The other more expensive seats make the profit. You make the airline smile.

[rubicon]

The chances of being bumped are 1 in 10,000. In the petroleum market the safest petroleum product is propane. However when it explodes its the mother of all explosions

Its troubling to me that a passenger pays ahead of time for a guarantee of a seat on a plane and an airline's right after the fact is to change its mind or give your seat away to someone else.

A shopper doesn't go to the store and buy a dozen egg and as s/he leaves ,the store tells them they want six back.

All insurance contract have exclusions ( ie events deemed not insurable). Yet when an exclusion is applied what is the policyholder's reaction?

Overbooking practices may be legal and deemed prudent business practices but its poor public relations. Passenger pay for certainty and peace of mind.

Being bumped may be 1 in 10,000 but then it depends on whose ox is being gored.

United is going out of its way to sully the passenger's character but it is irrelevant to their action. they would be wise to settle this case and call a meeting to determine a better way of dealing with economies of scale

[biker1]

There is no certainty in airline travel and everyone realizes that. Have you ever looked at the on-time arrival statistics? Weather, mechanical problems, air traffic control issues, security issues, etc. can cause delays. Being involuntarily bumped probably has the lowest probability of delaying your arrival. Overbooking is not the issue. If it was, you would hear these sorts of stories every day. Some poor on-the-site decision making by everyone involved, including the passenger, in this isolated case was the problem.

Originally Posted by rubicon

The chances of being bumped are 1 in 10,000. In the petroleum market the safest petroleum product is propane. However when it explodes its the mother of all explosions

Its troubling to me that a passenger pays ahead of time for a guarantee of a seat on a plane and an airline's right after the fact is to change its mind or give your seat away to someone else.

A shopper doesn't go to the store and buy a dozen egg and as s/he leaves ,the store tells them they want six back.

All insurance contract have exclusions ( ie events deemed not insurable). Yet when an exclusion is applied what is the policyholder's reaction?

Overbooking practices may be legal and deemed prudent business practices but its poor public relations. Passenger pay for certainty and peace of mind.

Being bumped may be 1 in 10,000 but then it depends on whose ox is being gored.

United is going out of its way to sully the passenger's character but it is irrelevant to their action. they would be wise to settle this case and call a meeting to determine a better way of dealing with economies of scale

[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by DonH57

I like Southwest Airlines new slogan, " We beat our competitors, not you!".

I heard that in addition to their low fare 'red eye' flights...United is going to be offering 'black eye' flights also.

[DonH57]

Originally Posted by ColdNoMore

I heard that in addition to their low fare 'red eye' flights...United is going to be offering 'black eye' flights also.

And a fight club section on the aircraft!