The airline industry is one of only a few businesses that is allowed to sell more of its product than it has. When a carrier overbooks one of its planes, it has what’s delicately called an “involuntary denied boarding” situation on its hands — meaning someone’s not going to get kicked off the flight. And until now, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the airline asked for volunteers, which it rewarded with vouchers, cash, hotel rooms, meal tickets and other compensation. But is this system of paying off customers quietly being eliminated?
It is if you talk to a passenger like Chris Rauwendaal, who recently flew from Sacramento to Knoxville, Tenn., by way of Dallas, on American Airlines.
“While waiting for the Knoxville flight, an announcement was made that the flight was oversold and five volunteers were requested to give up their seats in exchange for a $250 voucher,” he remembers.
Normally, the next step would have been for American to sweeten the offer — either adding to the value of the vouchers or including a free upgrade to the next class of service. But according to Rauwendaal, that didn’t happen.
I was asked to come to the counter. When I did, my boarding pass was taken away. I was informed that I would be removed from the flight because I did not pay full fare and would be able to catch a flight to Knoxville the next day. When I told the attendant that I had to be in Knoxville to teach a class the next morning, I received no sympathy or consideration.
I checked with American Airlines, and a spokesman told me that the carrier followed its procedures on the Nashville flight. American compensated Rauwendaal with a $250 voucher and put him on the next flight to his destination, in accordance with its conditions of carriage.
But that’s not how Rauwendaal sees it.
“In my experience, when an oversold situation occurs the reward for people giving up their seat is increased until the required number of people come forward,” he told me. “I have seen this happen on many occasions. This is not what happened in this case; I was simply told that I was taken off the flight – like it or not. With 800+ thousand miles in my AA frequent flier account I have no need for a $250 voucher.”
In response to a written complaint, American sent him the following note, which appears to be a form letter:
I’m terribly sorry we couldn’t accommodate you aboard flight 3599 on December 9.
While there are very good reasons for the standard industry practice of overbooking flights, they are of little solace when you are the one who is denied boarding and as a result, your travel plans are disrupted. I would like to explain, however, the procedures we follow in the event that we have to deny boarding to a customer.
If a flight is oversold, no customer will be denied boarding until we have asked for other customers to volunteer to give up their seats. However, if we don’t get enough volunteers, customers may be involuntarily denied boarding in the following order:
1. Passengers who do not meet the minimum check-in time requirement
2. Passengers without assigned seats, based on check-in time who do not qualify for one of the following categories
3. Passengers with assigned seats, based on check-in time who do not qualify for one of the following categories
4. AAdvantage®/AAdvantage® Gold
5. Executive Platinum, Platinum, Emerald and full fare coach passengers
6. Business Class passengers
7. First Class passengers
8. Those passengers who will experience a severe hardship as a result of being denied boarding — might include those who are elderly,disabled or children traveling alone
As you can see, the order in which we choose customers who can’t be accommodated on an oversold flight is not arbitrary. Our agents have procedures they must follow in situations such as this.
There is simply no excuse for overbooking any flight. If airlines such as JetBlue can have only a few involuntary denied boardings in a month — just check out their numbers on the latest airline report card if you don’t believe me — then other carriers should be able to effectively end their overbooking practices.
But the big question is, have airlines stopped asking for volunteers when they’re overbooked? Are they now arbitrarily kicking passengers off the plane?
If that’s happened to you, let me know or leave a comment.
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
The real problem is deeper and more insidious. The airline is continuing to sell ultra high price walk up fares even after the flight checks in full. The know that the $250 voucher has very little marginal cost to them, and is far less than the price last full fare tickets sold. Until the airlines are forced to compensate passengers denied boarding at something close to the cost of a full fare ticket, it will always be in the airlines economic best interest to overbook with full fare passengers and bump advance purchase passengers.
Whether or not it’s continuing to get worse I don’t know, but it certainly has gotten worse over time. I remember when volunteers routinely got things like a free round-trip ticket anywhere in the US. Those days already appear to be gone.
People can’t have everything they want, and this is a situation where they want everything: low fares, flexible tickets, and no overbooking. It just won’t happen and nor should it. I’d say you can pick two of the three.
On just about any ticket you buy, you’re allowed to make a change to your flight any time prior to departure for a fee. People do this all the time and enjoy having the flexibility. The problem is that the airline will be left with an empty seat if the passenger changes at the last minute, and that seat on that flight is gone forever. Airlines keep very good records of no-show probabilities and that’s how they determine how much they overbook. Of course, that’s not a perfect method, so they will go over and under on a regular basis. Still, the extra revenue generated makes it worthwhile and it helps keep prices lower.
If airlines stop overbooking, fares will go up. Think about all the revenue pressures they face right now, especially with $100 a barrel oil. If they have to sell a handful fewer seats on every flight, they’re going to need to make up for that loss of revenue somehow. Fares will go up.
There is an alternative. If tickets are completely unchangeable, then when someone reserves a seat, it’s his regardless of whether it gets used or not. If you don’t fly, sorry, you lose your money. But then the airlines don’t care if you show up or not, because they get their money anyway. Even under this scenario, they’ll lose change fee revenue so fares might still need to go up.
You can use the JetBlue example if you’d like, but they’ve been looking for more revenue as well. If they start to see more business travel onboard, I wouldn’t be shocked to see them start overbooking.
What was the Pax’s cash offer if he didn’t want the voucher? He did had that option.
(see Federal Regulations on Oversales. “http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_07/14cfr250_07.html”) If AA didn’t explain that to him satisfactorily, then he may be able to pursue the matter further in small claims court.
Side Note: AA’s “Condition of Carriage” seem to leave out that your cash refund is 200% of the value of your remaining ticket. (They only mention it as regards the smaller
Since he was involuntarily denied boarding, could the customer have requested a refund of his tickets in cash (instead of accepting the flight voucher he ultimately accepted)?
Solve the bumping cost by adding a simple rule to the feds . . .
“The passenger involuntarily denied boarding may file a claim for consequential damages, including lost wages, time off or the value of vacation time, hotels, and other costs associated with being bumped. The Airline shall then be liable for Two Hundred Percent of the amounts approved and filed. The airline shall pay the amount claimed by the passenger within five business days by check. The airline may deny the claim. The passenger may then bring suit in any federal or state court in the State the flight was scheduled to arrive or depart, in which the airline is headquartered or in which the passenger lives. In the event the passenger recovers any amount denied by the airline, the passenger shall be entitled to three hundred percent of damages awarded along with reasonable attorneys fees and costs.”
That will solve the bumping by voucher program
I’ll tell you one example. In 1989 I was traveling on business from LAX-STL. Policy called for us to be allowed to travel F class. Guess what [and this was in the days of walking up to the ticket counter and them actually giving you a ticket] – F was full. They BUMPED a frequent flier on an award ticket from F back to coach in order to get the revenue. The gate agent did this himself, on his own, and took my $1500 very happily.
I’m sure that still goes on. Bumping is completely dependent on when you checked in, how much you paid and where you stand in the panolpy of gold, ruby, diamond, silver and titanium in the ffb programs.
My understanding of the bump process is that airlines used to love “voluntary bumps”, and were deathly afraid of “involuntary bumps”.
Involuntary bumps must be reported to FAA, and used to look very bad on an airline’s record, so they were willing to offer bigger and bigger perks until they got the needed voluntary bumps, which did not get reported and were not a black mark. (after all, the customer volunteered, right?!)
These days, with so much bad news about airline service, food, lost baggage, short legroom, ontime records, etc, etc, airlines simply don’t care if they have to report involuntary bumps anymore. Its just a tiny blip on the radar of bad news, and the FAA doesn’t take it seriously anymore. As a result, they frequently offer token amounts, like $250, then commence with the involuntary bumping.
If you want to solve the problem, involuntary bumping needs to be made a serious travel sin again. Consequential damages might be one way to do this. Serious fines paid to the FAA might be another. But as long as there are no serious repercussions for involuntary bumping, it will increase, and the perks of voluntary bumps that travelers like me love, will disappear.
Yikes! Your RSS feed today (1-10; involuntary bumping) ends in a very prophetic note. I’m positive now that I’ve witnessed a couple of occasions whereby only 1 announcement for volunteers has been made, and when no one responded, folks were bumped. Both times involved US Air.
One occurrence was in PHX, the other in CMH. On both occasions, I was at the gate very, very early, and both times, only 1 announcement was made for volunteers, before folks were kicked off (in CMH, the passenger protested quite loudly, before being quietly led away by security)
I hope you’re wrong, Christopher, but I fear you’re correct. I dread this trend where airlines will soon begin making only a half-hearted attempt for volunteers, before selecting passengers for bumping.
Why should someone who buys their ticket in advance to save a little money be treated as though the price they paid makes them second-class compared to others who’ve paid full fare.
I actually have a story that shows that maybe the “good ole days” aren’t completely gone. I was flying AirTran out of BWI to Portland, ME. They overbooked and asked for volunteers. The FIRST offer they made was for TWO round trip tickets anywhere AirTran flies. My plans were flexible, so I took it. Now, the subsequent flight delays on both ends (both due to “weather” and to AirTran’s status at Portland) made for a not-very-pleasant experience. But, that has nothing to do with their very generous offer for voluntary bumping. This happened less than six months ago, and I haven’t attempted to redeem the tickets yet. I guess we’ll see.
David H. . . because money talks – it always has.
MarkA – I hope those were confirmed space tickets and not space available . . . .the airlines have a nasty habit of giving voluntary bumps space available.
I have, when I have time, ALWAYS walked up to the gate agent and made the follwing offer -when I have 2 or 3 seats available and there is a nonstop or some better flight to my destination . ..
“I have three seats and will accept your offer on one condition, confirmed first class seats on Flt XXX. ”
If they need more than three then they want my 3 seats which are usually together. They will jump through hoops to a) not raise the price of the seat auction and b) accommodate my first class request because it costs them zero.
When I lived in LA and the flights to LA were ALWAYS overbooked, and there were flt ops usually every 90 minutes or so to LA, well, I never made much of a sacrifice and I got to fly F when it was something.
Now I live in a marginal market in the northeast and fly out of BDL. Almost EVERY flight to a hub is a regional jet or has had first class removed. So, its kinda hard to make it work now.
So where does not paying full-fare fall into their list? They seemed to feel they had a justification, but I don’t see it. That said, with all the recent air delays it’s almost crazy to cut it so close in case of a problem.
I don’t see anything wrong with overselling. I think that it’s a proper and valuable business tool. i think we are confusing the legitimate business procedure of overselling with the problematic procedure of involuntary bumping.
The solution is to simply prohibit involuntary bumping, or create huge disincentives for an airline to involuntarily bump anyone who has complied with the check-in requirement.
That way the airline will be forced to sweeten its voluntary bumping deal until a sufficient number of passengers are happy to be bumped.
So simple.
I was involuntarily denied a seat on a US Airways flight out of LGA. They offered me a free round trip anywhere in the USA but the seats were limited to only those which were available to awards miles. It was pretty tough to use the free voucher when I wanted to. What burned me was that they would not put me on a JetBlue flight going to the same destination an hour later saying that they did not have an agreement with JetBlue. I had to wait 5 hours for another flight on US Airways to my destination.
Like many others, I always take the voluntary bump if my schedule can accomodate it (I fly 4-5 flights a week due to work)— only take offers of money do not take the ticket vouchers as you will more than likely NEVER be able to redeem them due to the numerous restrictions.
My absolutely worst bumping experience was on US Air PHL to PHX. The flight was oversold and the gate agent asked for volunteers. I was the first one in line to offer my seat. She took my boarding pass wrote my name down and gave me the boarding pass back. She then asked me to step aside but remain near the counter and so I did… never once leaving her sight. She boarded the flight. I asked half way through the boarding process (no other passengers were around) if she was going to need my seat (I’m used to the bumping process and have always been given an answer prior to boarding). She told me to wait and she would let me know.
Well, the flight boarded… completely. She was finishing printing the manifest and I asked her again if she needed my seat. She looked at me and said “You should have already borded the airplane now I will have to reprint the manifest.” Not in the mood for a confrontation, I simply boarded.
Once I took my seat, the gate agent came on board the plane, involuntarily bumped a passenger in coach so that a F/A could reposition.
So, they had a volunteer and still involuntarily bumped someone.
The vouchers that USAirways issues for a bumped passenger can be used as $200 toward a purchased ticket. Since the inventory for mileage awards (the same inventory used for these vouchers) is usually small or non-existent, this is a good way to use those vouchers. At this time, the taxes on the $200 value are also subtracted from the ticket value, so another 10% is taken off of the purchased ticket. So, the pain of being bumped can be lessened a bit when the traveler knows he has a voucher worth about $220 in his pocket. I’m assuming with the new rules of $400 per bumped pax being instituted tomorrow (May 1), the value of the voucher will be $440 – but as with all things airline related in today’s world, I won’t count on it.
i had one somewhat pleasant “involuntary” bumping experience…
i was flying internationally and when arriving for my flight was told that I was volunteered to move to another flight – one that departed two hours later than my original flight. however, this flight was non-stop as opposed to the other which included a 4 hour layover. This allowed me to arrive at my destination in los angeles with more time to clear customs and actually catch my connecting flight (with the option of going standy on one a few hours earlier), which would have been an extremely close call had i been on the original flight. It did create a slight hassle in that I had to communicate the change in arrangements to family on the other end so they knew when i would actually be arriving, but that was small compared to the quicker arrival at my final destination.
i will add however, that it would have been nice to be “asked” not “informed” as it did create some hassle but at least it was an overall positive experience.
I don’t understand why the airlines think that they own the passengers. I am a paying CUSTOMER, not a piece of meat. I think suing is a good idea at this point.
I have voluntarily given up my seat to fly on the same flight the next day. I was given meal voutures, hotel accomodation, transportation to the hotel and a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere I wanted to go that Alaska Air could take me. I was happy ,the airline was happy, it was all good. Imagine if a restaurant bumped people, because they were too busy…
I work for US Airways, and I can tell you this: US Airways flights are always oversold. They don’t care how many seats are available, they sell as much as 180 tickets for a 140 seater. US Airways reduced the Ticket price by 40% from 2000. They could double the ticket prices and solve the “always oversold” situation, but they chose not to do so. They loose thousands of dollars on every flight, considering the fuel price. Every normal business man would adjust the price of their product to avoid losses, specialy since there is more clients willing to buy the product than product availability. Not US Airways. They decided to cut down on the flights. They will cancel 20% of their oversold flights, to save 20% on their daily losses. I could put my 8-year old into charge of US Airways, and he could probably solve the problem without my help within 2 weeks. I am wondering how much the managers make for their retarded plans to save the Airline.
US Airways is inducing another bancruptcy. Last time they did that they got tax cuts and billions of Tax money. They will blame it on fuel prices, even though they cut oversold flights. I hope somebody will go to jail this time!
I remember encountering a similar event when flying back home. It was on a recent United Airlines trip and the flight was oversold. United began asking for volunteers to give up their seat in exchange for some amount in voucher, a 3 night hotel stay, and a flight on January 2 (crummy deal really). When I lined up to board, a gate agent called my last name and asked me to come to the front desk. I refused to do so because I didn’t want to get bumped, so I ignored it which was my response for saying no to the supposed bump. After a good 20 minutes of wondering whether the gate agent would come on board and deny me boarding, the plane pushed from the gate. To this day, I have no idea whether that call was for bumping or a free upgrade to economy plus. I don’t think I wanted to find out the hard way.
check alaska airlines since they switched to the $200 voucher from the free round trip ticket in december 2008.. the amount of involuntary denied boardings is ridiculous
So far, experienced flyers have favored dollars-off vouchers over free-trip vouchers especially when the former can be used for booking anytime and the latter have restrictions on what flights and seat categories they can be used with.
You can (and I often do) offer to volunteer even before the gate agent asks for volunteers, of course asking in advance what compensation would be offered before handing over your boarding pass.
I have not been involuntarily bumped from a flight yet, but I believe I came extremely close though. This was a flight I took in December of last year. I was flying back to LAX from New Orleans and the gate agent called my name and my brother’s though they pronounced our last name incorrectly. Being that this was the last flight of the day and year until January 2, 2009, I did not bother to go to the agent because I knew the agents wanted to take me and brother’s boarding pass away and tell us that we have been bumped from the flight and will have to wait 3-4 days to go on another flight. Though I was aware of the involuntarily bumping policy, I chose not to go through that path; even though me and my brother could have made some easy money.
I think the best advice if the gate agent calls your name on the PA is: ask the agent questions before handing over your boarding pass. If the agent refuses to answer anything until you hand over your boarding pass, just politely refuse that you won’t give them anything, and walk away. I don’t think the airline can force passengers to give their boarding pass unless it is for security reasons.