Oh, good point. Here’s another easy one: buy the airline! Let’s see them try and bump the boss.
I was on an overbooked flight 2 months ago but noticed there was a passenger with two open seats next to him the entire flight.
Have no idea what the hell that was about. I think he may have been a prisoner though because he started arguing with the flight attendant about getting his passport back when it landed.
Need to dispute your statements, here. Planes are really not all the same size. Even the same model will have different seat configurations. Southwest, the poster child for single-model business (along with Ryanair) have different versions of the 737 that seat different numbers. The A320 family has different versions. Swaps happen all the time.
Regarding your comment regarding seats, it does not take much for a seat to be legally unusable. If a seat cannot raise to the upright position, it is not legal to fly (at least, among most airlines/countries.) This is not a case of incompetence, its simple mechanical statistics.
I don’t think most people understand how many things must work correctly for an aircraft to be suitable for flight. The technology of the simplest radio in the aircraft dwarfs anything typically found in a consumer household.
My Doctor doesn’t do important transplant surgery, but he did fly outbound on a cheap fare – and inbound on a full price business fare on a full price airline. So if there was any difficulty getting back to work on time, it wouldn’t be because of an avoidable problem.
Southwest, which does not impose a penalty on cancellations or rebooking, has lots of no shows. I know this because my daughter worked in the industry and was on a message board where airline people traded info on particular loads for those who wanted to fly non-rev. Southwest overbooked more than most because of this, just like in the old days when you could change tickets easily.
When you get kicked off a plane or they won’t let you on, do they steal your money and force you to buy a new ticket on another plane, or do they roll over the fare you already paid to the new flight you have to take?
vueling’s planes are all the same configuration, specifically in order to avoid sizing problems (the same applies to several other European hoppers). I didn’t claim that all planes in the whole wide world have the same size: I claimed that when the planes involved all have the same size, there is no size problems, which is an obvious obviety. Your airlines work in a legal landscape which allows overbooking, and they make their management decisions in such a landscape. vueling, Air France or norwegian work in a no-overbooking landscape and they make different decisions; and yes, for some of the companies which work in such a legal frame that includes “which planes to buy and how to set up the seats”.
Vueling: “For various reasons, the plane might not be able to operate with all the passengers on board and this would cause overbooking.”
Air France: “Like all major airline companies, Air France opens a greater number of seats for booking than are actually available on a flight. This method helps us maintain attractive fare rates and transport several million extra passengers. In practice, it lets us limit the financial loss resulting from the fact that some passengers choose not to take the flights they have reserved.”
Norwegian: “It’s not common for us to overbook our flights, but on the very rare occasion that there is a shortage of seats, we will firstly call for volunteers willingly to give up their seat, in exchange for compensation to be agreed on with Norwegian.”
It depends, but in general if the airline is the one preventing you from flying then they must make accommodations or refund your money. If you accept a voluntary bump you generally get paid an agreed upon fee and fly at a later time. With an involuntary bump there are rules spelled out for when you are entitled to compensation and when you are not.
If you are responsible for missing your flight then it depends on what class of ticket you bought and whether the airline considers you a valuable customer. You may get charged a change fee, you may pay the difference in cost of the tickets, or you may get nothing.
I spent several months last year flying weekly on standby tickets. Most of the time the flights weren’t full, but on the few occasions that they were full there would be enough no-shows that I would still get a seat. It’s surprising how many people will book a ticket but not turn up.
I think TheMysteryWriter was asking if you had to buy another ticket to get to your original destination, not what compensation the airline has to provide. You don’t have to buy another ticket, or roll the cost of your original ticket or anything like that. If you are denied boarding by the airline, the airline has to get you to your destination at no additional cost to you.
Here’s another question - how does involuntary bumping apply to groups traveling together? What about families? Could they involuntarily bump one member of a group but force the rest of the group to travel on that flight or forfeit their fares?
Well, I always upgrade to better seating when I fly, and I’ve never been bumped even once. That lends credence to your statement although, I suppose, someone could say it is just a coincidence.
It might vary from airline to airline, and I don’t have a cite, but what I’ve been told is that the priorities are:
- paid first class and very high status customers (both of whom can effectively bump other passengers off a full flight if, for instance, their flight was canceled and they need to make other arrangments.)
- high status customers (with possibly a few categories)
- people who bought refundable/more flexible/more expensive tickets
- people who upgraded the cheapest tickets in some way
- people who are members of the frequent-flier program, even if they don’t have status
- people with no other relationship to the airline, who bought the cheapest, non-refundable, no frills seats, ranked in order by when they checked in.
Involuntary bumping is rare, and I basically don’t worry about it. But I have joined the frequent flier program of every airline I’ve flown on, because the only cost is getting a few extra emails, and I suspect that item 5 is true.
On the flip side, I know of a few people who intentionally book extremely popular flights and then volunteer to be bumped. My son’s history teacher flew for about 8 years on a single ticket by doing this. (Each year, he got re-booked to a later flight, and was also give a voucher that he used to book the following year’s over-booked flight.)
The company I worked for used to allow the most expensive tickets (coach, only executives flew first class). This allowed the passenger to rebook on a later flight with no penalty. At one morning meeting I was at, the boss began a discussion that droned on and on. The out-of-towners would leave periodically to rebook their flight, from 12 to 3Pm to 5PM and finally 7PM. No additional cost to them, but presumably someone on a cheaper ticket was going to be bumped and wasn’t and then eventually on the 7PM flight was. As you can expect, airlines love these business passengers and will accommodate their whims, since they paid probably 3 or 4 times more than the cheapseats for the privilege. If they had left 3 seats go empty then there’s nowhere near as much profit in that. Most flights I’ve been on in North America are essentially full, so odds are someone’s getting bumped.
I’ve read that you want to check in online once the check-ins open 24 hours before the flight. If you check in later and are not assigned a seat, it means you are on standby and likely are being bumped unless some expensive ticket is a no-show.
I have heard, but don’t have a cite, that sometimes if a business traveler wants to get home ASAP after their meeting is over but doesn’t know how long the meeting is going to take (Picture Steve Martin’s character at the beginning of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles), they will buy fully refundable tickets on several flights the same day, show up for whichever one is the next one after their meeting finishes, and just collect a refund for the tickets they didn’t use.
They don’t need to do that. If you a flexible ticket to the latest flight you might want, you can just rebook to an earlier one when you get to the airport. And if you have enough status, they’ll bump someone else to do it.
I was on a plane once where they bumped people because of the weight restrictions. It was a flight to the Western US a few days before Christmas. The issue ( as it was explained to us) was the luggage / freight weight, because so many of the passengers had checked ski and snowboard equipment.
And I must say the crew did an exemplary job of avoiding an involuntary bump, because no one wants to give up their seat on Christmas Eve. They targeted specific groups of passengers with offers and finally got a group of 5 to agree to a later flight in exchange for over $1000 in vouchers per passenger, first class upgrades on the next flights, meal vouchers and first class lounge privileges.
Again, flights are delayed and canceled all the time. I’ve probably, in my lifetime, been on 5 or 6 flights that were canceled outright. I’ve had airline related delays of over 24 hours maybe 5 times. I’ve had delays of over 8 hours more times than I can can count. The very occasional involuntary bump isn’t even on my radar as a travel problem. If being on time is critical - like if I have an important meeting or I’m traveling to catch a cruise ship- I leave a day early.
ETA : and no-shows aren’t unheard of, I’ve been the no-show. I once bought a non-refundable ticket and then my friends and family screwed the pooch on their end of the vacation plans, and I decided it was cheaper to eat the ticket than to pay to salvage the trip. Plus people run late and miss flights ALL THE TIME. Especially my late husband, who philosophically refused to be early for anything.
I used to do that all the time about 20 years ago. If my flight was for 6PM and my meeting finished at 1PM, I’d head to the airport, check-in, walk through the gate area and find the next flight to NYC. Then I’d just approach the gate agent and ask if I could switch to that flight. I hardly ever took the flight I was booked on, sometimes I’d switch just because I cleared security fast and could make the 1PM flight instead of my 1:30 flight.
But at some point they started charging for these switches, and I stopped doing this.
Coming from Boston? I (and everyone else) did this Logan to Newark, since there were flights every hour. But close to 5 PM a lot of the earlier ones were full, so that could be a reason for someone to buy tickets on earlier ones they doubted they’d use.