If you buy a ticket for your spouse & then try to have your sibling use it, that won’t work as they (most likely) have different names & this will be caught when photo ID is checked. Toddlers don’t have photo ID. How would the airline know that, if it was the case, that the ticket bought for the 18yo was used by the 2yo? I don’t think that was the case as the father said the toddler was in a car seat/real seat on the way out.
Also, the airline employee giving out false info, in contrast to FAA guidelines & her own company’s policy to BS them out of a seat is/should be a big no-no.
It doesn’t even matter if he checked in. Since he didn’t board, the seat would be given up anyway.
The problem with Delta is that even if they are “right.” You don’t drop the hammer on a baby. And then removing the entire family even after they agree to give up the baby’s seat just digs the hole deeper. Sure the family was mistaken regarding ‘how airlines work,’ but their reasoning wasn’t entirely ridiculous. As far as I know, airlines are the only industry where overbooking is allowed. Can you imagine if you showed up for a movie or a concert and were told, sorry can’t come in we’re overbooked.
Airlines are the weird ones.
The amusing thing is the family ended up flying on United.
You know one piece of information you have to give when you buy an airline ticket? The date of birth for the passenger.
I’m guessing that when the airlines saw a passenger manifest with a 1999 date of birth on it, they sensed that the toddler might not be the person whose name was on the ticket.
Just want to clear up one of your assumptions. Overbooking is used in pretty much every industry that takes appointments. Hotels, car rentals, hair salons, dog groomers, and yes, even concerts overbook, not sure about movie theaters, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
It’s not even a matter of being allowed, either, anyone can overbook any time they like, it’s just that the airlines is one of the few places where overbooking is regulated.
I was on a BA flight from Edinburgh to Paris when suddenly the crew realized that the person in front of me was traveling on his wife’s boarding pass. He explained to the crew that his wife got an upgrade to Club World but he didn’t, so she took an earlier flight in coach so he (the man) could fly in luxury (I don’t know why they were not both on the same plane; the guy was really an asshole and was cursing at the BA stewards).
He too refused to leave his seat, and eventually a bunch of British police officers came on and negotiated with the man for about 10 minutes until he voluntarily got off the flight. They didn’t have to grab him, bash his head against anything, or draw a weapon. They very calmly told him **words to the effect of **“the flight will not take off as long as you are on board. Eventually you’re going to have to get off this plane, and if you don’t voluntarily exit now then when you get off the plane you will be arrested. We can wait all day.”
It was explained to me that it’s a security thing - you don’t want people mixing and matching boarding passes because someone who is on a “no fly” or other watch list could travel under a different name. I think tickets should be transferable with the airline’s involvement and the normal ticketing security screening.
I didn’t know that. It seems counter to my experience, but that isn’t here or there.
Hotels and car rentals I think will upgrade when a category is overbooked, but I’ve never been told or heard of someone being told, “nope, sorry no car for you.” Now I’m worried for my upcoming trip.
Theater and Concerts usually have assigned seating, so I don’t see how they could overbook those. That would be a nightmare to administer.
Movie Theaters are generally not sold out and when they are I doubt there are many if any no-shows. Usually they are sold out for a reason and people buy the tickets within hours of the show.
Restaurants will sometimes get into trouble when they fall behind, but I don’t think they bump people. I don’t think they overbook either. Some charge a fee for no showing, but that would indicate a lack of overbooking.
Did you ever watch the sitcom Seinfeld? In one episode, the main character, Jerry, showed up at a car rental agency desk where he had reserved a car, but they had none available for him.
Do gate agents use that as a matter of routine? I show my ID when going thru security but typically only show a boarding pass at the gate. If the family presented four boarding passes how would they know which four family members it was for unless they take an extra step to look something up?
There’s no cost to make a car reservation. It is possible to either have more people than expected show up &/or have one or more vehicles expected to be available down due to maintenance/mechanical (flat tire) or accident.
How is this different from an airplane in that there are x number of seats available. I’ve always booked my seat at the time I’ve booked my flight.
There is a very small chance that they will not be able to get you a car, but there is a decent chance that they will not be able to get you the car you wanted.
Concerts are not all assigned seating, and movie theaters are only assigned in the expensive theaters (I have not had assigned seating at my theater, but I have that option if I want to fork over another $5 for the director’s hall)
Concerts probably got some level of regulation after the who concert, where they overbooked by quite a bit, everyone showed up, and people died when the stands collapsed.
You can buy tickets to a show weeks in advance. People do that for premier nights often.
That’s the fee that they have to charge in order to not overbook.
Airlines could avoid overbooking, but they would have to pass that cost onto the customer, in the form of non-refundable tickets, or at least deposits that are a very substantial percentage of the ticket price.
I do dog grooming, and I overbook about 10-15%. Sometimes, everyone actually shows up, and it’s a really busy day, but that’s rare. Most of the time, 10-15% of the clients don’t show up, and around half of them are nice enough to tell me before their appointment. If I didn’t overbook, I would lose money just about everyday as I have employees getting paid to stare at the walls.
It’s amazing how much better things go when the authorities are concerned with doing their job professionally, rather than busting heads at the slightest excuse.
I’ve read that argument a few times before, and i’ve never really found it convincing.
The primary security checkpoint for air travelers is at the TSA security barriers at the airport itself. You require no identification or anything other than a name and date of birth to purchase a ticket, and if you’re not checking bags then no representative of the airline has any way to confirm your identity before you enter the security line.
When you get into the security line, the first person you come in contact with is the TSA person who takes your ID and your boarding pass to check your identity. It seems to me that any concerns about a no-fly list could be addressed here, whether or not the boarding pass matches the ID.
So, if the ticket is bought in the name of John Smith, and he then gives the ticket to Pete Jones, who is on a no-fly list, then it shouldn’t matter what the ticket itself says, because the TSA check should catch Pete Jones when he presents his identification. He will be prevented from flying based on who he is, not based on what name is on the boarding pass.
But, as you recognize, none of this even needs to get as far as the TSA security screen, because it’s well within the airlines’ capacity to allow transfers.
Exactly. The TSA and the FAA, as far as i know, have no prohibition on the transfer of airline tickets. That’s something that the airlines themselves choose to do, largely for reasons of economics and convenience. It’s something that they could easily change, and even charge a small administrative fee for.
They would want to put some safeguards in place. For example, i could understand them setting limits on the numbers of transfers, to prevent people from essentially turning into airline ticket scalpers, and buying cheap seats early in order to sell them at a profit later on. But it should be possible for people who have emergencies or whose plans change to transfer their tickets. Such situations don’t happen very often, and allowing each person, say, one transfer per year, or one every 15 flights, or whatever, would be easy, and would also be good customer relations. But that’s probably why it won’t happen.
One of the issues with car rental places is that they require nothing for a reservation except a name. They don’t ask for your credit card information, and they don’t require a deposit. They don’t allocate you a specific car, and there is no penalty to the customer for failing to show up. Under those circumstances, overbooking is a little more understandable. With the airlines, you have paid for your ticket up front, in full, and have booked yourself onto a specific flight at a specific time.
I have noticed, the last few times i rented a car from Hertz, that when i booked online i was given the option of doing a regular reservation, just giving my name and email address, or actually paying for the rental up front. Upfront payment came with a very small discount (a couple of dollars a day), but i wonder whether it also guarantees that there will be a car available. If they look like they’re going to run out of cars, i wonder if they save the available vehicles for people who have paid in advance?
Well that’s kind of my point. In so many other aspects of our lives, tickets are handled differently than airlines. It’s airlines that are the exception. I mean, I’ve never gone to the theater and had to check in only to get assigned a different seat than what I bought originally because of reasons. So yes, they are the same, but also no, they are totally different!
This is precisely what it does. I am an Avis regular fancy pants customer (the name of the program escapes me) and I always pay in advance, but I always get precisely the car I want, and the process of getting it is about fifteen seconds long.
I imagine that there’s “slop” in the dog grooming business that’s not possible in the airline business; you can stay late or rush through a couple of dogs if you’re suddenly overbooked. The number of seats on an airline is fixed, though.
I was once bumped from my yearly mammogram. I’d already waited a couple of hours after my scheduled appointment time, then they came and said, “It’s 5:00 and we’re closing. You’ll have to reschedule.” I rescheduled with the director of the facility, who made sure that someone greeted me at the counter and walked me through so I didn’t have to wait at all. That was the last time I used that office.
I showed up at National car rental at BDL a year or two ago to find a bunch of grumpy guys waiting around and no cars in sight. While I was there on business, I know someone nearby who gave me a ride. It was very strange.
They didn’t used to make it easy to cancel. Had to talk to someone across the globe on a shitty connection, whereas the booking was easy.
So, this customer [dis]service functionary tries to physically seize a fragile and priceless ancient musical instrument, which is probably worth more than his entire life value, and stick it on the conveyor belt against the passenger’s will, and in violation of federal transportation regulations.
If things went down as she and her attorney claim, then I hope United’s bottom line suffers. But her attorney’s statement about not hazarding the hands of a surgeon or musician (as opposed to the rest of us, who apparently don’t need our hands in order to earn a living) is arrogant crap. Never mind the implication that it’s ever OK to injure anyone’shands during a verbal confrontation.
I write code for a living, and if my hands were paralyzed I could still do my job, with the proper equipment. In fact, I could lose several fingers and still do my job without special equipment.
Some people, however, do rely completely on the functioning of their hands to make a living. A surgeon might be able to continue to do surgery if he or she lost partial use of his hands, or might not, depending on the nature of the damage.
Most musicians rely heavily on their manual dexterity to make a living. Most instruments require complex fingering to be played, and that list includes the violin.
Saying that particular people rely more on the health of their hands does NOT imply that others don’t need the use of their hands, and does NOT imply that it would be ok for someone else to be hurt. It only implies that the person in question has a greater reason for concern.
