Why airlines like United (and some Irish carriers) overbook their flights
The practice has been brought into focus after a passenger was forcibly removed from a plane.
US AIR CARRIER United Airlines is currently the centre of some unwanted publicity, to put it mildly.
The forcible removal on Sunday night of an Asian man from a flight between Chicago and Louisville, Kentucky, went viral after a number of fellow passengers filmed the man screaming as he left the plane.
It later emerged that the man, who claimed to be a doctor, had been asked to voluntarily leave the flight and was offered a series of financial incentives to do so.
Up to $800 was offered to the passengers who eventually left the plane, while United was authorised to go as high as $1,350.
Those passengers were asked to leave due to the plane being overbooked for its journey, and United needed to get four of its employees to Louisville in order to make their shifts for the following day elsewhere on the airline’s network.
But the publicity surrounding the flight doesn’t mean that overbooking is uncommon. It happens all the time with American airlines, and it’s not unheard of it happening on Irish planes either.
No-shows
A spokesman for Aer Lingus told TheJournal.ie that its flights “can be overbooked from time to time … as with all other airlines” when questioned on the carrier’s policy.
“This can result from operational disruption where a lower-capacity aircraft is substituted for the one originally planned or sometimes, where a particular route (normally) has a high level of no-shows, bookings may exceed the number of seats available.
“These instances are rare and in such an event we seek volunteers to travel on the next available flight and compensate the volunteers accordingly. Our procedure is to deal with these matters at the point of checking-in in order to minimise any disruption to our guests.”
Ryanair was more to the point, with a spokesman for the budget carrier saying: “Unlike other airlines, Ryanair does not overbook flights.”
Nevertheless, overbooking is commonplace for most airlines, according to one industry source, although they described United’s less-than-conciliatory approach as “bizarre”.
Aer Lingus, for its part, said its approach in such situations is usually to deal with the situation prior to check-in and before a boarding card can be delivered.
Such a situation is known as ‘denied boarding’ and compensation for that circumstance is set out under EU regulation 261, with the money paid out proportional to the distance of the flight being missed. The compensation policy is:
- €250 for all flights of 1,500 kilometres or less
- €400 for all intra-community flights of more than 1,500 kilometres, and for all other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres
- €600 for all flights not falling under either of the above categories
Business flights
So why does overbooking happen? Well, such situations most commonly arise on flights heavy with business clients, it seems.
“Business travellers change their plans very rapidly, meetings get cancelled or circumstances change, and often they just won’t show up,” the source said.
“If you’re in a situation where you have 20 flights between a destination daily and 10% of passengers aren’t showing up for their bookings, the airline is going to keep selling flights.”
Conversely, the issue is a lot less likely to be seen on a flight where a family has booked a holiday many months in advance as such passengers will almost always show up.
Domestic American journeys, such as the now-infamous United flight, are “more akin to a bus station”, the industry insider said.
“You’re talking an airport where United might have 20 flights leaving per day on that route, huge amounts of people showing up for flights they’re not booked on, huge amounts of people not showing up at all, and then security is that much less than what a European traveller might be used to.
“So they won’t let you on, but as they’re pulling up the ramp and they still have space, they’ll take you on.”
So, to summarise, it’s possible that an Irish traveller could find themselves on an overbooked flight, but not for the reasons seen in Chicago. And a local airline is unlikely to ever remove a passenger from an overbooked plane they’ve already boarded.
Written by Cianan Brennan and posted on TheJournal.ie
