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Airline Bumping Addicts
Opinion · November 30, 2003

On their return trip from a conference, Timothy Johnston, his wife and two students traveling with them tried to connect in St. Louis to their scheduled flight back to Paducah, Ky. They couldn't.

"We were told there was only one seat left on the 16-passenger plane," the Murray State University professor recalled. It was the last flight of the day, and they were eager to get home. No problem, a gate agent said, and promptly issued each passenger $100 in cash compensation for the inconvenience. They ended up renting a car and driving home to Paducah. Later, Johnston's carrier even refunded $418 for the unused portion of their tickets.

Good customer service? Yes. Good business practice? Maybe.

Most airlines are getting away with a business practice that no other industry could: stiffing customers. They've been able to do this because they've developed a reward that is so enticing that customers feel compensated despite being the victims of an egregious practice.

The airline industry is fond of filling its planes beyond capacity and then paying off the displaced passengers with free food, hotel rooms and money. At no time of the year is this "bump" bribe more visible than now, during the busy holiday travel season that begins this week with Thanksgiving. During the fourth quarter of last year, a total of 10,928 airline passengers were denied boarding, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Delta Air Lines, with 1.79 passengers bumped per 10,000, led the way. America West Airlines had the best record, with a total of only 80 passengers left high and dry at the airport.

Denying one or two out of every 10,000 passengers may not sound like much of an issue. But there's more. The airlines overbooked flights to such an extent during the same period that they had to offer flight vouchers to another 214,312 passengers who voluntarily gave up their seats.

If this still doesn't sound like a problem, maybe that's because in a sense, it isn't. It's one of the industry's redeeming qualities.

For all of their other flaws, carriers handle overbooking in a way that is an example of unintentionally brilliant customer service. Instead of making excuses for a system that chronically, and unapologetically, oversells flights, the major airlines simply pay off the customers affected by their incompetence. Then they go a step further by rewarding them for continuing to use what can only be described as a defective product.

Part of the reason people don't complain much about overbooking is that it's almost a victimless crime. In all but a few cases, passengers who volunteer walk away from the gate happy, and the carriers get to run another flight without getting sued for selling a seat they shouldn't have. Indeed, only 454 complaints about oversales were filed with the federal government last year out of a total of 9,471 grievances, making it only the eighth most-complained-about issue. The fact that virtually no one gets hurt through overbooking -- there's no missing or damaged luggage, and no one has been led away from the gate in handcuffs -- makes the practice of filling planes beyond capacity one of the airlines' more socially acceptable sins.

Actually, some people like overbooking. They even crave it.

I learned about the addictive quality of the bribe long before I became an advocate for travelers. My college roommate always seemed to fly for free. One day I asked him how he did it. He confided that he booked an inexpensive flight from Oakland to Los Angeles during peak periods. When airline employees asked for volunteers, he would raise his hand -- and receive a voucher for round-trip travel anywhere the airline flew. Since then, I've met or interviewed many other savvy air travelers who do the same thing. The overbooking bribe makes for a small but fiercely loyal group of customers who learn to play the system to their advantage.

Not all airlines do it, of course. Contrarian JetBlue Airways, for example, doesn't oversell its flights as a matter of policy. In the first half of this year, it bumped only 10 passengers, all of them volunteers.

"People want to go to the airport knowing they have a seat," CEO David Neeleman told USA TODAY's Chris Woodyard. "We also don't want our people to get beat up when customers find out the plane is overbooked. . . . We have lots of stress in this industry, and trying to figure out whom to bump only adds to the stress of these jobs."

Imagine if other businesses emulated the airline industry. Ignore for a moment that there's really no good excuse for overbooking a flight and that it's dishonest to sell a seat that isn't actually available. Focus, instead, on how customers feel about this practice and how the airlines continue to foster such goodwill for committing such bad acts.

What if a restaurant paid patrons if they didn't have the menu item they wanted to order? What if phone companies offered people cash every time a call didn't go through? This isn't as abstract an idea as it may sound. After innumerable technical-support questions and several house calls, Dell recently replaced my personal computer with a completely new one. It must have concluded that it was cheaper to give me a working PC than continue trying to fix my defective one.

The airline industry, meanwhile, has concluded it's cheaper to keep offering a defective product than replace it with a working one. And it looks as if passengers wouldn't have it any other way.

How to get bumped

Jeff Thomas played the bumping game on a recent trip from Atlanta to Washington. "The flight was so full that Delta was offering $600 in vouchers to volunteers," remembered the Arlington Va., computer systems administrator.

He liked being bumped so much that he's done it twice since then and has used the compensation to pay for vacations to Florida and California. "I look forward to flying Delta in hopes that I'll be rewarded with more free travel," he added.

How do you play the bumping game? Here are a few commonly-asked questions:

Q: Is it better to be bumped voluntarily or involuntarily?

A: That depends. The reward for being denied boarding involuntarily is greater. But you can't say "no," and you could miss an important meeting or connecting flight. Generally, passengers -- and airlines -- prefer voluntary bumps. The carrier has to give you less, and you get to choose whether to give up your seat.

Q: If I check in early, am I less likely to be bumped?

A: Under most airline rules, if you're holding a ticket for a confirmed space in first class, you're less likely to be denied boarding than if you have a ticket in the steerage section. But being early helps.

Q: How are volunteers picked?

A: A gate agent will announce that the airline is looking for volunteers. Tell the ticket agent you're interested. If your seat is needed, the agent will call your name shortly before departure.

Q: What should I hold out for?

A: If you volunteer, the carrier normally offers you a voucher for a round-trip ticket anywhere in the U.S. the airline flies and, if there's a long wait for the next flight, perhaps a meal voucher, hotel room and phone card.

Q: How much is negotiable?

A: If you volunteer immediately, not much. But if there are no takers, the airline can sweeten the offer, perhaps by dangling a round-trip ticket with fewer restrictions or an upgrade to first class. Just don't take too long to decide, or someone else may snap up the offer.

Q: What if I'm denied a seat?

A: Normally, your airline must offer you a ticket on the next available flight or, if it's the last flight out, on another carrier, plus limited cash damages, meals and lodging. Often, the airline employees who deny boarding to a passenger will go out of their way to accommodate you. It isn't unusual to be granted access to a first-class lounge or an upgrade voucher; anything to keep you happy.

Q: What is the law on overbooking?

A: An airline is bound by its contract of carriage, which spells out passengers' rights and an airline's obligations. Federal law requires that the document be available at the ticket counter. It also can be downloaded from most airline Web sites. Because airlines are deregulated, the government generally leaves it up to them as to how many seats they can sell (or oversell) on a given flight.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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