Gave up seat and got all this!!!!
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From: Dave on 13 Jan 2010 14:16 Hi All I'm not complaining of course but just wondering how this works?!! Last week we were at Atlanta airport and the airline was just about to start boarding our flight to the UK, before they did they made an announcement. They said they were looking for 8-10 passengers who could be flexible with their travel arrangements, to come off this flight and get on a later flight with $750 flight voucher as compensation. We were almost the last to board and I asked if they still wanted volunteers to come off the flight. To cut a long story short we came away with the $750 voucher each, a flight on the same scheduled flight the following night but in business class, vouchers for a stay at an airport hotel plus meal vouchers! Fantastic deal but how come? Just curious... Cheers Dave
From: Neil Williams on 13 Jan 2010 15:59 On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:16:49 +0000, Dave <d(a)btinternet.com> wrote: >Hi All > >I'm not complaining of course but just wondering how this works?!! Most airlines overbook, because there will always be a number of people who don't turn up. Of those, a fair few will hold flexible tickets, so will be able to transfer them to another flight or refund them without charge (or with a negligible charge), so a seat would effectively have gone unsold. (Low-costs don't normally do this, as once the flight has gone so, usually, is your money). So, instead, airlines sell a proportion more seats than they actually have on the flight, on the assumption that a normally predictable number of people won't turn up for the flight. In the EU (or any flight to or from the EU) there are minimum compensation amounts for this, if done involuntarily. But nobody likes that, so airlines usually offer a similar but usually slightly lower amount of compensation to volunteers. In that case the airline is happy (they've got rid of the excess passengers) and the passenger is happy (as you were). Full details of the law is here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_261/2004#Denied_boarding however this still went on before the law was in force, because it's better to have happy volunteers "bumped" than choosing someone who may then end up somewhat irate. (The way volunteers are elicited, and the fact that there will usually[1] tend to be enough of them, turns something that would be very annoying to the passenger to a bit of a benefit on both sides). [1] Some airlines overbook to silly proportions, e.g. the 1500 ish Amsterdam Schiphol to Heathrow. This is rather bad practice, as you end up with involuntary "bumps", who as the flight mainly carries weekly commuters tend to be very unhappy indeed. Neil -- Neil Williams Put my first name before the at to reply.
From: pete on 13 Jan 2010 16:16 On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:59:59 GMT, Neil Williams wrote: > On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:16:49 +0000, Dave <d(a)btinternet.com> wrote: > >>Hi All >> >>I'm not complaining of course but just wondering how this works?!! > > Most airlines overbook, because there will always be a number of > people who don't turn up. Of those, a fair few will hold flexible > tickets, so will be able to transfer them to another flight or refund > them without charge (or with a negligible charge), so a seat would > effectively have gone unsold. (Low-costs don't normally do this, as > once the flight has gone so, usually, is your money). So, instead, > airlines sell a proportion more seats than they actually have on the > flight, on the assumption that a normally predictable number of people > won't turn up for the flight. > I experienced this on a SouthWest Air flight (PHX to ???) some years ago. The "bidding" started at $400 with no takers and increased a couple of times until enough passengers took the bait. I don't know if they still practice bidding up the amount, or if they operate a "take it or leave it" (and we'll force pax off) policy nowadays. $750 + perks and a free flight sounds pretty good.
From: Roland Perry on 13 Jan 2010 16:14 In message <0g6sk5d0pqk3kq4k35650oj3ikc0q9ec2q(a)4ax.com>, at 19:16:49 on Wed, 13 Jan 2010, Dave <d(a)btinternet.com> remarked: >Last week we were at Atlanta airport and the airline was just about to >start boarding our flight to the UK, before they did they made an >announcement. They said they were looking for 8-10 passengers who >could be flexible with their travel arrangements, to come off this >flight and get on a later flight with $750 flight voucher as >compensation. > >We were almost the last to board and I asked if they still wanted >volunteers to come off the flight. To cut a long story short we came >away with the $750 voucher each, a flight on the same scheduled flight >the following night but in business class, vouchers for a stay at an >airport hotel plus meal vouchers! > >Fantastic deal but how come? Used to happen quite a lot, but maybe the bad weather has triggered it. They have overbooked the plane, and also have people displaced from earlier flights. It's cheaper for them to give you those benefits, than to deny boarding (with various penalties, aggro etc) to other people who have probably paid multi-thousand-dollars for the flight that day. -- Roland Perry
From: Neil Williams on 13 Jan 2010 16:26
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:16:25 GMT, pete <no-one(a)unknown.com> wrote: > $750 + perks and a free flight sounds pretty good. $750 flight voucher, which won't actually cost them $750. A clever "win-win" if the person offered it wants to travel with that airline again. (Rail travel vouchers are similar - they're often used for additional discretionary journeys so they don't necessarily cost the railway anything bar the admin if they're used for a journey that wouldn't have been made if it wasn't free). Neil -- Neil Williams Put my first name before the at to reply. |