# What happens when a bus passenger goes missing.? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 28, 2019, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512 "2019-12-28T15:00:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/21 "2019-12-29T04:14:13Z")
My ex-wife worked for a while as a tour guide. One time, after they had picked up a bunch of customers and went by several busses to the airport, but they got their discovered one customer was missing. This was in the pre-cell phone days, and my ex-wife was really worried. They had made a stop somewhere at a rest stop, and the guy was late getting back to the buses. People were going back-and-forth between the buses so she couldn’t get an accurate count. Fortunately, the guy looked around and found another box from a different company that was also going to the same airport and he caught a ride with them. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/22 "2019-12-29T07:17:22Z")
Hell, Greyhound doesn’t even care if they [run you down](https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/12/texas-jury-awards-18-million-to-parents-of-man-killed-by-greyhound-bus-in-southern-oregon.html) while you try to get the driver’s attention. And the DA in Oregon piled on by not prosecuting the driver. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/23 "2019-12-29T09:44:45Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Doesn’t sound particularly believable, even pre-9/11. > > The doors to the jet bridges have always been locked, even back then. The ground personnel wouldn’t simply leave the door unlocked and walk away. We saw it happen in about 1986 at Maiquetia Airport in Caracas. Some young couple were kissing and kissing and apparently tuned out the boarding announcements. They closed the door and suddenly there was a huge pounding and they opened the door and the young man boarded. We’ve done a couple of Caravan tours and the tour guides have always counted before we left the location. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/24 "2019-12-29T10:20:05Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > They honestly don’t seem to care too much the schedule or the safety, either. Greyhound is an appallingly terrible service. Massive overbooking, and they do fuck all to help you if you show up for your midnight transfer and the next leg is overcrowded, or if you are late because your transfer was late. The official motto seems to be "fuck you, if you weren’t pathetically poor, you wouldn’t be here in the first place, so don’t go around with expectations ". I forgot that there is a whole world of difference between travelling long-distance on a scheduled coach (as opposed to a tour) in the USA and doing the same in Europe. Coaches here are seen as a perfectly reasonable way to travel between cities and are usually both cheaper and more convenient than a train, albeit much slower. The driver still wouldn’t wait very long for a tardy passenger though, even if their luggage was still on board. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/25 "2019-12-29T10:45:50Z")
About 5 years ago I took a bus trip from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, and when the tour guide did a headcount before leaving the canyon he found that a party of four was missing. We ended up departing the canyon an hour late after he and the tribal management tracked down the missing family. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/26 "2019-12-29T14:39:05Z")
I was on a cruise in the Caribean and was _really_ enjoying Barbados. I decided to go back to the ship to change clothes. As I walked up the gangplank, I noticed they were disassembling the readmittance station. They told me another 10 minutes and I’d have missed the ship. It would have then been up to me to arrange a flight to the next island on the ships itinerary. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/27 "2019-12-29T18:12:59Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > They honestly don’t seem to care too much the schedule or the safety, either. Greyhound is an appallingly terrible service. Massive overbooking, and they do fuck all to help you if you show up for your midnight transfer and the next leg is overcrowded, or if you are late because your transfer was late. The official motto seems to be "fuck you, if you weren’t pathetically poor, you wouldn’t be here in the first place, so don’t go around with expectations ". “Overbooking” is just a euphemism for selling seats they don’t actually have, and should be prosecuted under existing fraud laws. ---
**Author:** ![Anny\_Middon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@Anny\_Middon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anny_Middon)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/28 "2019-12-29T18:30:01Z")
> [@Triskadecamus](#): > > The sure belief that airline personnel would be confident that Passenger #8978989’s checked luggage is most likely to be on the plane he decides not to board is touching. Even most likely to be in the luggage stream for some plane headed to the same destination is optimistic. TSA ransacks luggage according to their own mystical formulae, they don’t keep track of it. I was on an international flight pre-9/11 where a passenger’s luggage was on the plane, but not the passenger. We were delayed while the bags were found and removed from the plane. A good friend managed luggage handling for the international terminal at O’Hare; he confirmed this was SOP. I can’t imagine that post-9/11 it’s gotten any less stringent. And really, when you think about it, what’s the big deal? They scan the luggage strip on all bags when loading them on to the plane, and scan the boarding passes of all passengers. It’s trivial to determine if there’s a bag without a corresponding passenger. I’m sure they don’t care about passengers without checked bags, which is how your luggage may not make it to your destination. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/29 "2019-12-30T14:56:39Z")
Years ago, before 9/11, **DesertWife** and I flew from St. Louis to Reno with a change of planes in Las Vegas. There was an air show being held at STL and we were 45 minutes late departing to allow a demo (red Arrows I think) and were consequently late for the connection at LAS. Luckily we were far from the only ones in that boat and there was a gate agent at the exit intoning, “Los Angeles, gate X that way. Seattle, gate Y that way,” etc. We dashed to the proper gate where they were waiting, told them there was an old lady hobbling behind us, in case they didn’t know, and buckled in. They practically clipped the old lady’s heels with the door, hustled her to her seat, and started the push back while she was still fastening the buckle. When we were taxiing the flight attendant stopped by on his final check and said, “You’ll be happy to know your luggage made it on board.” “Oh, cool. I was figuring I was going to be driving back up to Reno tomorrow to get it.” “Nope. The planes were right next to each other; it was only the people who had to make that hundred yard dash.” ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/30 "2019-12-30T16:25:44Z")
I also noticed Amtrak does not care who gets on or off the train as long as you have a ticket. They don’t check tickets until after they leave the station. You can still buy a ticket after you board but it’s much more expensive that way. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/31 "2020-01-01T01:13:24Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > a friend of mine was very late for a flight but he banged on the closed plane door and they let him in. That probably would not happen now after 9/11. > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Doesn’t sound particularly believable, even pre-9/11. Not ten hours ago, over breakfast, a friend told me and my wife that exact tale. Very post-9/11, it happened this year. His comment, “How am I supposed to learn responsibility if people keep saving me from my mistakes?” ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/32 "2020-01-01T16:31:53Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I also noticed Amtrak does not care who gets on or off the train as long as you have a ticket. They don’t check tickets until after they leave the station. You can still buy a ticket after you board but it’s much more expensive that way. I just took Amtrak from Chicago to D.C. and they certainly did check tickets and assign seats based on your destination. I assume they assigned passengers to various cars based on destination as it was an overnight train and no need to wake the D.C. bound passengers for those middle of the night stops. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/33 "2020-01-20T03:38:42Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > I just took Amtrak from Chicago to D.C. and they certainly did check tickets and assign seats based on your destination. I assume they assigned passengers to various cars based on destination as it was an overnight train and no need to wake the D.C. bound passengers for those middle of the night stops. We did that route, though we had a roomette so that wasn’t an issue. When I took Amtrak to Florida, however, they were definitely steering people to different cars depending on their destination - I’d have been sent to a different car had I not been going nearly the entire length of the route. And going from NYC to Vermont they sometimes steer people to different cars if they’re going only as far as, say, Albany. Friends of mine nearly got separated from their belongings when the car they were on was about to be detached versus going all the way north; they found out just in time. I think the conductors had moved _most_ of their belongings while they were down in the cafe car, but missed several items. I’d expect Greyhound, or Bolt, or Megabus or whatever, to pull away without me. When we had a charter bus to Boston (Girl Scout trip) the driver wouldn’t have gone on with any passengers missing, but it wasn’t his job to keep track; the trip organizer did. ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2020, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/34 "2020-01-20T17:34:29Z")
Recently I took a bus from Seattle to Vancouver crossing the Canadian border, obviously. The passengers all walk through and are individually interviewed. One of the young (minority, obviously) women on the bus was actually a Canadian citizen, and they really didn’t like her answers as she had gone down to Seattle “for the day” that morning and we had boarded to go north at noon so she had been in Seattle for less than an hour or two and “couldn’t remember what she had done in Seattle” or “what she had been planning to do”. It was bizarre because she clearly wasn’t a terrrorist/drug dealer/mule or anything else as she had no luggage and literally the worst imaginable un-rehearsed answers. But the bus driver yelled to her, “We’re leaving. The next bus is in 3 hours, I’ll tell them to look for you if you’re still here and free to go.” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/35 "2020-01-21T16:10:53Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > “Overbooking” is just a euphemism for selling seats they don’t actually have, and should be prosecuted under existing fraud laws. I would guess that Greyhound probably has a fair problem with no-shows/reschedules, and overbooks in an attempt to ensure their buses are full under ordinary conditions. I.e. they expect 15% of passengers booking that particular journey to not actually be on that particular bus because they didn’t show up, they rescheduled to a different one, they cancelled, etc… So rather than just leave the terminal with 85% full, they’ll intentionally schedule 115% of the capacity expecting that 15% to fill in for the ones who aren’t on the bus. Usually that probably works (airlines do it all the time too), it sounds like Greyhound isn’t doing their overbooking very well, and are frequently having to leave a lot of people at the terminal who paid for tickets. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/36 "2020-01-21T19:26:33Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I would guess that Greyhound probably has a fair problem with no-shows/reschedules, and overbooks in an attempt to ensure their buses are full under ordinary conditions. > > I.e. they expect 15% of passengers booking that particular journey to not actually be on that particular bus because they didn’t show up, they rescheduled to a different one, they cancelled, etc… > > So rather than just leave the terminal with 85% full, they’ll intentionally schedule 115% of the capacity expecting that 15% to fill in for the ones who aren’t on the bus. > > Usually that probably works (airlines do it all the time too), it sounds like Greyhound isn’t doing their overbooking very well, and are frequently having to leave a lot of people at the terminal who paid for tickets. That’s no excuse for selling more seats than they have available. There are better ways to deal with no-shows. If someone reschedules they can sell that seat AFTER it has been made available. If someone no-shows, they have an empty seat that has been paid for, so it not only doesn’t hurt them, it probably saves them a small amount of fuel. At the very least seating should be first sold first served. If the bus (or plane) seats N people, the first N tickets are guaranteed a seat. If someone gets ticket # N+X it should be made clear up front that they won’t get a seat unless at least X people don’t show up. ---
**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/37 "2020-01-21T22:12:08Z")
In Iceland, you can go looking for yourself! This really happened. A woman with a tour group in Iceland ended up joining the search party for herself. A passenger “went missing” and they started a search party. Turns out she had changed clothes and freshened up and no one realized she was the same woman that got off the bus. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/38 "2020-01-21T22:25:58Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > That’s no excuse for selling more seats than they have available. There are better ways to deal with no-shows. If someone reschedules they can sell that seat AFTER it has been made available. If someone no-shows, they have an empty seat that has been paid for, so it not only doesn’t hurt them, it probably saves them a small amount of fuel. > > At the very least seating should be first sold first served. If the bus (or plane) seats N people, the first N tickets are guaranteed a seat. If someone gets ticket # N+X it should be made clear up front that they won’t get a seat unless at least X people don’t show up. Does Greyhound actually now sell tickets for specific trips/days? My recollection from when I took the bus regularly when I was in college in the 1980s (which admittedly, may now be faulty) was that one bought a ticket for a particular route, but not necessarily for a particular _day_. ---
**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/39 "2020-01-21T22:59:08Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > That’s no excuse for selling more seats than they have available. There are better ways to deal with no-shows. If someone reschedules they can sell that seat AFTER it has been made available. If someone no-shows, they have an empty seat that has been paid for, so it not only doesn’t hurt them, it probably saves them a small amount of fuel. > > At the very least seating should be first sold first served. If the bus (or plane) seats N people, the first N tickets are guaranteed a seat. If someone gets ticket # N+X it should be made clear up front that they won’t get a seat unless at least X people don’t show up. What if you tell people when you sell them the tickets they might not be able to get on? Is that really vastly different than your last proposition? Everyone I know goes into plane ticket purchasing knowing full well they might get bumped. No one wants to, but it is a risk we all take. If you don’t like the risk, don’t buy the ticket. If someone is a no show and the seat goes empty, they make far less than if they sell the seat to someone else. So no, they aren’t saving money by having that seat empty. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512/40 "2020-01-23T14:46:47Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > That’s no excuse for selling more seats than they have available. There are better ways to deal with no-shows. If someone reschedules they can sell that seat AFTER it has been made available. If someone no-shows, they have an empty seat that has been paid for, so it not only doesn’t hurt them, it probably saves them a small amount of fuel. > > At the very least seating should be first sold first served. If the bus (or plane) seats N people, the first N tickets are guaranteed a seat. If someone gets ticket # N+X it should be made clear up front that they won’t get a seat unless at least X people don’t show up. I think you’re missing the point- let’s say a passenger vehicle holds 100 people. A transport carrier knows, based on industry standards and previous experience, that only 85 are going to show up for their assigned trip on time. They’re going to drive/fly the vehicle to its destination regardless of whether it has 5 or 100 people on board, so it is in their best interest to fill it with 100 people, as every person beyond the number required to pay for the journey’s costs represents sheer profit. So what do they do? They sell 115 tickets for that trip, expecting 15 people to not show up, show up too late, switch their tickets around to a different trip (probably the majority of the issue, IMO), etc… and for some proportion of the extra 15 people to fill in, in order to give as close to 100 people on that trip as they possibly can. Most transport carriers have pretty flexible rescheduling policies- it’s likely that they perceive it to be more advantageous to overbook and reschedule people who can’t make it, than to try and last-second resell those tickets AND stick the people who couldn’t make that trip with the cost of the initial trip. Instead, what they do is offer enticements to people to be rescheduled- have you never been at an airport and heard the gate agents offering various incentives for passengers to be rescheduled on a different flight? Like free tickets and what-not? I doubt very many people at all actually get forcibly bumped from their flights or bus trips- it’s far more likely that the vast, vast majority get incentivized into volunteering for a different flight. And everything works out- someone is made happy with an extra flight (probably not full) and the carrier has a 100% full trip. Only in the extreme edge case is someone involuntarily booted and made unhappy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-a-bus-passenger-goes-missing/845512.md?page=3)