Many of the tickets airlines sell are fully-refundable, so a lot of times they'll have no-shows who cancel last minute. They overbook just about every flight to account for this.
Two reasons: 1. Because of the heavy use of very legacy IT systems, booking can come from multiple sources and are not reconciled until boarding. 2. They have actuaries that run numbers that SOME amount of people will re-book, so if you over sell a flight by some X number, you'll end up carrying closer to 100%. When passengers fail to miss their flights or re-book, you have actually too many people for a flight. For the airlines, its worth the vouchers and bumps to ensure more full flights from a pure actuarial stand point.
from what I've read on reddit, yes, they have a percentage that they can overbook because that's typically the percentage of passengers that cancels or no show up. it's like 1% or something depending on their data
You see? This is why you don't put people on Ignore whom you have occasional political disagreements with. That is some funny ****, Commodore.
that's absolutely how it works, and every airline uses a similar formula to account for the no shows vs the fuel costs vs the cost of overbooking flights vs the cost of non revenue generating passengers vs the cost of reimbursing the paying passengers "due to our policy of overbooking flights, your flight has been overbooked." but most airliners handle their volunteer policy OUTSIDE the aircraft, not once the paying passengers have already boarded. I take the voucher when time, convenience ,and value all add up. flying home once, i missed a Rockets home game that I would have caught with my Dad. He took a business client and the Rockets got trounced. I ended up paying for my next trip home for the holidays with the voucher.
Yeah, never put the Commodore on ignore, no matter any politics. Dude posts very funny shiznit. On topic, I think they call the % of booked passengers who change or no show the "melt," and all sorts of businesses do the same optimization dance, including (in my own biz) university admissions. You have to predict how many of your acceptance letters will turn into actual freshman students showing up. It's a nightmarish crapshoot when you really need a full freshman class but only have so many dorm rooms and up to half the kids you accept will go elsewhere. At least there are ways to finesses your way through several stages in this case, versus an airplane.
Think a big issue was that United needed the seats to fly their own staff to get somewhere. Apparently they announced on the PA that the flight wasn't taking until they got 4 seats for their own folks.
If they offered 800 they can offer 1500 or whatever people were willing to take to cheap out on 700 bucks, they chose to bloody up a passenger and drag him off the plane while everyone films, I hope that money saving tactic paid off.
My ex girlfriend and I got involuntarily bumped in Paris $3000 later, and a cab back into Paris to watch Silversun Pickups live = worth it.
"As his attorney, I will be working with United to come to a mutual agreement in the monetary range known as "lottery winner" to disappear as quickly as possible. Further questions will be answered by the United PR team after their check clears." Spoiler
On our flight to Portland last summer SW overbooked and needed 2 people to volunteer. They offered $600 per person, and a flight a couple of hours later in the day. My wife and I would have jumped on it, but it was for the Seattle leg of the flight and we were transferring in New Mexico. we would have been happy with a bit of extra spending money for vacation. I don;t think I would have been as happy f they had dragged me out by my feet.
Well that was disturbing - more videos are being released and that man looks like he is having a full on nervous breakdown.
Growing up in my country everyone was so poor, I would have probably volunteered off the flight for a green apple and a toothbrush.
so this guy went toddler protest to get out of something he didn't want to do and is now the internet hero. If only this hospital had other doctors. me first society. the air marshalls are the people who the internet should be raging on. UA is moving the dreamliner out of houston tho so F them.
