Airlines are notorious for selling far more seats then they have. The college I went to did this with their housing, and pissed a lot of people off. In that case, the deposit wasn’t even refundable. Why is taking money for a product you have no intention of providing legal? How is that any different from fraud?
They are fulfilling the contract that you agreed to when you bought the ticket. The fact that you’re agreeing to a contract that’s so unfavorable to you as to allow this is your responsibility, not theirs.
The reason the airlines do it is that historically a certain number of people never show up for a flight. If the airlines didn’t overbook, those seats would remain empty and the remaining seats would have to be more expensive, to cover the costs of flying the plane.
There are laws that specify how much the airlines have to pay if a passenger is involuntarily denied boarding due to overbooking. I think those amounts are generous enough that I usually hear the airline calling for passengers to voluntarily give up their seats, in exchange for a smaller amount of money or vouchers.
See this recent story from the public radio program Marketplace on the subject.
By the way, I don’t know what happened at your college but in my experience, colleges also experience a certain number of no-shows. In my freshman dorm, I was with three other guys in a room meant for three for the first couple of weeks. Once things settled down, the college was able to identify empty rooms and two of my roommates went down the hall to an empty double room.
What does “no intention of providing” mean here? How can you demonstrate this? The airline will – plausibly – assert that at the time they sold you the ticket, they intended to fly you to your destination.
The terms of sale include the possibility of having to refuse a seat. There’s no way to make that illegal - the airline is providing service on its own terms.
Extreme it: Every flight is a lottery for which they sell twice as many tickets as seats, and refund or guarantee a seat for a future flight for those who don’t get aboard. The only “losers” are those who don’t get on that flight and had to for personal or scheduling reasons.
If you need a guaranteed seat, you don’t fly a low-cost “lottery” airline, or at least don’t buy a lottery ticket for that flight - you buy something closer to “full fare.”
You gets what you pays for. No reason for any option to be illegal as long as the terms are clearly stated and fairly administered.
There have been some airlines that don’t overbook. However, if you miss you flight for any reason, you have to pay for another ticket to fly to your destination. No complementary bookings on later flights.
would the OP prefer that to airlines that overbook?
I’m not the OP, but as someone who has never failed to turn up for a flight, yes i would.
The reason it doesn’t happen, though, is that the people who fail to turn up are, in many cases, the business travelers that constitute a huge part of the airlines’ business. Basically, the current model of overbooking and bumping is one that reflects the desire of the airlines to make life easier for the customers who pay the highest prices for their seats, and who buy the most tickets.
It’s a rational economic decision. If they started charging for no-shows, and not allowing them to re-book, they’d piss off their biggest and most profitable customers.
I don’t understand. 
Aircraft has 100 seats.
100 people buy with cash those seats.
50 of those people do not show up.
The airlines has 100 paid tickets, the actual number of bodies means nothing. Flight flies away with normal profit.
Before the flight the airlines sells 50 seats again for cash.
The 50 no shows did not give advance notice so they do not get any money back.
The airline now has 50 more people’s money so they in effect get to double the price of 50 seats. Sell them twice.
Or
The original 100 actually show up? How do the 50 extras get money back if they can not wait XXX hours for the next flight?
People buy tickets that actually say that paying money for this ticket does not get you on an airplane at the discretion of the airline?
You are the first person to buy a ticket for that flight, (cash) and you show up at the appointed time with 149 other paid up (cash) ticket holders and you can be refused and another person who was the 150th person to buy a ticket gets to go instead?
The ticket agent will check to see the time the ticket was bought so that the first 100 get to go?
IMO, the airline will not do that for a cash customer. Or do they? If not, why not?
Does the first ticket buyer regardless of how the ticket was purchased always get to go if they show up on time but are the 110th person to physically arrive at the gate along with the 109 people who also showed up on time?
I have never seen a time when the passengers are called one at a time from a crowd.
If you were the 101st person to check in after previously paying cash, the will say, well sorry the first payed 100 have shown up so you will have to wait 3 days for the next flight or we will give you 10% of your money back and you can go in three days. “Tough that you can not do that, so we get 90% of your money… Should have read the fine print sucker…”
There is no legal recourse for the customer? :mad:
I was once assured that I would never miss a flight. Then I booked a $250 round trip to Las Vegas on now-defunct Independence Air. I mistakenly booked my return flight for 12:15am Sunday… When it should have been 12:15am Monday. Yes, very stupid.
So when I showed up to the airport a day late for my flight, I ended up having to spend $850 for a last-minute fare back home. That sucked.
I believe JetBlue has a no overbooking policy, so if that’s your bag, there’s someone that offers the service your looking for.
Not usually. The airline still owes something to those 50 no-shows. There may be a rebooking fee but they still get a flight sometime. So the airline is clearly making less money than if there was a butt in every seat.
You have a faulty understanding of how the system works.
There are statutory requirements for compensating passengers who are bumped involuntarily from overbooked flights. You can see the way it works here.
Basically:
If they can put you on a different flight that gets you to your destination within one hour of your originally-scheduled flight, they owe you nothing.
If they get you on a new flight, but your delay is 1-2 hours, you get cash in the value of 200% of your ticket price, up to a limit of $650.
If they can’t get you to your destination within two hours of your original flight, you get cash in the value of 400% of your ticket price, up to a limit of $1,300.
And they are still required to fly you to your destination, in addition to the compensation they give you.
They are also, before bumping people against their wishes, permitted to request people to volunteer for bumping in exchange for free flights or some other consideration. That why, when a flight is overbooked, you will always hear an announcement asking for volunteers before they actually bump anyone.
If airlines didn’t overbook, you have higher prices and less flexibility.
Given that there are nearly always enough volunteers who are happy to be bumped from a flight, what would the advantage be? It basically works out well for everyone.
“Why is overbooking legal?”
Because making some people wait for the next flight rather than having empty seats is a more economically efficient way to deal with the uncertainty concerning the number of passengers who show up for a given flight.
Also, given how price-sensitive the average flyer is, the people who bitch the most against overbooking would also overwhelmingly choose airlines that have overbooking policies over ones that don’t since overbooking helps airlines offer cheaper tickets.
How does NOT getting the seat that you paid for allow for more flexibility? Joe that gets bumped from his paid seat is not going to see it as flexible when he misses his daughters wedding.
It’s horse shit.
If the general you is so disorganized that they can’t get to the airport to get their seat, that’s their problem. Sure, let others that are flying standby grab it at an increased cost.
A plane that flies with paid seats that are empty is going to save the airline money. That could bring prices down.
Buy a ticket, no refunds says I. There goes your seat, to bad for you that you couldn’t plan to put your ass in it. Might save the rest of us a lot of grief.
And Joe will therefore not volunteer to get bumped. Joe gets to his time-critical event, and someone else gets to their non-time-critical destination a bit later but gets their next flight free, the airline saves money… It’s a win for everyone.
Now, there is still a very small possibility that nobody at all will volunteer to get bumped, and the airline will be forced to choose someone to bump and incur the penalty, and that Joe will happen to be the one they choose. Joe knew that when he bought his ticket, and if that small chance was unacceptable to him, then he should have paid more to fly on an airline with different policies.
Assuming the graped example happens with some degree of statistical reliability, it means that the profit margin on selling airline seats is 50% more than the simple per-seat difference between cost and sell prices.
That increased profit margin can be used for all sorts of things, but in particular, keeping the selling price of the seats at a level that the market will tolerate. Your seat is cheaper because of this than it would be if they only sold the number of seats they have.
The same yield management systems that the airlines use to price airfares (so that it’s possible for no two people on a flight to have paid the same price for a ticket) allow them to predict with reasonable accuracy the number of no-shows they can expect on a flight. So they might predict, for example, that the 8am Tuesday departure from LAX to JFK is expected to have six no-shows but the 10:30am Tuesday departure is expected to have 23 no-shows. Remember that they keep track of this data for every flight, for every day of the week and the year and for every weather condition so they know what happened in the past. I suspect they also pay attention to any special event that might change the averages. Perhaps there’s a convention in Manhattan later in the week, so that there are fewer no-shows than usual.
Ideally they would like the number of no-shows to match the number of standby passengers so that everyone is happy.
Once when I was young and dumb I bought a cheap (read: nonrefundable) ticket and ended up not being able to go. The airline kept my money of course and possibly sold my seat again to another passenger. I understand how it works but I still don’t care for it. Someone once told me that you’re not buying a seat on a plane, you’re buying a fare. The contract of carriage somehow doesn’t include a seat on said carriage.
Also don’t forget that when you book a plane ticket the airline bills your credit card immediately instead of waiting until you actually use the ticket. I don’t know of any other business that’s allowed to take the customers money before the product/service is delivered!
Yeah, plus consider that a certain number of those no-shows are people who’s connecting flights were late, so the airline can’t very well tell them “too bad, so sad” if the missed flight was the same airline’s fault.