How does an airline overbook flights?
When you book a flight through the airline's website or over the phone, you can select which seat you want and seats that have been chosen are not available. Wouldn't that prevent more than the aircraft's capacity from being ticketed on to the flight?
The airlines know that a certain percentage of people will not show up for a flight. They have details of that kind of information going back many decades. So, they know that, in general, X people will not show up for a flight from A to B, so they sell X additional seats.
Not everyone is offered a chance to select seats, or some people don't bother to do that.
Unfortunately, sometimes fewer people are no shows than anticipated, so the flight ends up oversold.
Many airlines have fares with seat assignment at check-in. They may oversell the flight with expectation of no-shows or late check-in which loses your seat. They may need to get a crew to another airport. They will bump passengers and call the plane overbooked as a lie. There are occasions where a plane needs to be pulled from service for maintenance and there's a change of aircraft to one with fewer seats.
In 2016, for USA airlines, Delta overbooked 10 passengers out of 10,000 as the worst performing in voluntary bumping with compensation. United was #2 at 7.2/10,000 followed by Southwest (5.9), Spirit (5.4), American (4.1), Virgin America (3.0), Alaska (2.9), Frontier (1.4), JetBlue (0.5). Involuntary bumping was not studied. Policies have improved to reduce overbooking on United and Southwest. According to the Department of Transportation, a total of 40,629 passengers were denied boarding involuntarily on domestic flights in 2016. That may sound like a lot, but it's a decline from 2015, when 43,704 passengers were bumped involuntarily.
Even with a policy of no overselling, like Jetblue has had for a long time and Southwest has implemented, there are still times where planes are taken out of service for repair or crew must get to another airport unexpectedly.
Yes, they overbook some flights because they know that many people will change their flight, or be no-shows. ON the other hand, you can choose your seat on most airline, and also request an upgrade (if you have status to do so on some airlines.) We're Delta members with status, and always fly First on long hauls - NY to La, for example. But short hauls - NY to FL - we will buy a Comfort seat - EARLY - and get on the upgrade list. The 2 flights we're taking for Spring Training to/from Tampa, now have all of Comfort filled, all of Economy - and very few ( like 2!) in FC. There's no way that plane is leaving with those empty - and 140 people on a WAITING LIST. So - you move up a dozen to FC, from Comfort; Econ to Comfort; and then move a dozen ONTO the plane from the wait-list. You have made 36 people - potentially - happy. Now this is all theoretical - there are SOLD seats in FC maybe, where people did not choose their assignment, and there are other factors that might cause bumping - but it has ALWAYS worked for us. We bot bumped DOWN to Comfort once when there was a plane change, and we had paid for FC. But as time went on, there were additional changes in times and aircraft that gave us grounds for a CREDIT - and then, back to FC. And they never took back the $800 then had given us for a credit - and we have since USED that for another flight. It pays ot be branded CC, loyal, and always polite - and to book EARLY so if there are changes, you can keep track of what you ORIGINALLY booked, and where they NOW want to stick you the week of the flight - and get some compensation.
Of you can always fly the super cheapo airlines and get what you get. Your call.
How does an airline overbook flights?
EASY
Over time they have discovered that a few that have booked seats DO NOT SHOW UP. They have thousands of flight records on each route and individual flights.
The Airline is attempting to have a full plane. One reason they offer a low price standby fare. You fly when someone does not show up.
On occasion things happen. EVERYONE SHOWS UP or some seats are needed for some reason by a higher priority to the Airline.
An estimated 130,000 were overbooked on Delta. The other 180 MILLION were not.(Last available statistics)
In other words it is about one seat every thousand. If you are the one you do not like it.
If you desire to pay more then Airlines will operate with more empty seats to allow for the stuff that happens last minute to change things.
Just the way it is in the customer driven pursuit of the absolute bargain.
As compensation must be paid to those that can't travel is expensive AIRLINES do not want to do it any more than necessary.
Some Airlines work harder at not overbooking any flight than others. They have worked out the costs of the empty seat and cost of someone not able to fly for their routes.
In Airlines things happen. A plane scheduled for a route might be out of service and the replacement plane has a different number of seats maybe more maybe less. The seats booked might just not be available anymore. It happens. Not often.
MILLIONS and Millions are not overbooked. A FEW thousands are.
As planes are now most of the time near full many Airlines have tended to decrease or eliminate over booking on some or all of their routes. There are about 300 Airlines THEY DO NOT ALL HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME overbooking issues.
100,000 flights a day decades of history on passenger loads are looked at to determine the best way for each possible flight.
Is it 100% NO IT IS NOT it is best guess for most of the time.
The staff that need to figure out what to do for the overbooked passenger are not having a good day either. They have no desire to deal with an over booked passenger any more than you want to be one.
They also do not like telling someone they can't board and the plane leaves with some empty seats.
No, they let some people buy without selecting a seat.
The airlines have years of historical statistics and know what percentage of passengers do not show up for flight. Based on that data, they will oversell. As for seat assignments, not all fares will allow you to choose a seat - e.g. Delta's Basic Economy.
Its not a perfect science but all airlines oversell their flights, and very very seldom do they wind up with more people then seats, I once got $300 in credit to wait 1 hour for another flight, so they handle it well. So most airlines run the same flights every day so if they fly from Detroit to Chicago every day at 3pm after a month of doing that they get a pretty good idea on a normal day how many people are going to not show up, how many people are likely to be delayed from other flights etc and then they can safely assume that is how many extra seats they will have… Hotels do this all the time to. Its really not a new thing, the whole ordeal with United on that one flight was there was no other same day flights to move anyone to so nobody volunteered, and it was actually airport security not the airline itself who made a bad situation worse
- Will autonomous cars hurt the airline industry for domestic flights in the worldwide and USA? And will it also hurt the bus industry or train industry or ship or taxi industry. Will gas stations disappear due to electric cars will it hurt airlines like southwest untied delta or any low cost airlines regional airlines Will hyperloop happen
- What happens to airline workers when flights are cancelled? I might start working for an airline soon and since it started snowing a few times again here in chicago i began wondering what happens to workers when a storm hits and flights are cancelled? Or when flights are cancelled in general?
- Do you prefer night flights or day flights? I prefer night flights. The view of all the city lights and cars passing by below is so relaxing and I love the way airports are all lit up at night.
- Do I have the right to change flights when the airline have changed the time? I booked flights for the summer and my return flight has changed time, and is now earlier. There's a stop over, which would now be a very long wait due to the first flight being earlier. Will I be allowed to change the second flight to a earlier one, so I don't have to wait so long? Also who do I change this with if I do, the company I bought the tickets from or the airline itself?