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Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

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Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#41

Post by praneshp »

chmaynard wrote: post #16

Southwest Airlines has the best website, best checked luggage policy, best change policy, and now no overbooking. The big four domestic airlines all treat coach passengers like cattle, but Southwest is the least predatory. Edit: Also, consider that Southwest is very profitable despite the fact that they don't have first class or business class sections on their aircraft. Yes, passengers pay different fares. But as fa…

Virgin America[0] has a better website, in my opinion. Southwest has always been nice to me, but when they had their big outage in May 2016 they were quite rude to everyone.

https://www.virginamerica.com/

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#42

Post by rdl »

I think my favorite solution to this is to sell "guaranteed" and "standby" tickets. Sell full plane capacity of "guaranteed", and then any ticket after that is bumpable/standby. You could potentially switch to sell "bumpable" tickets earlier, too, at a discount.

If the airline is flying ~8 flights a day from SFO-SEA, I'd be fine in many cases paying x% less for y% risk of being bumped one or two flights later.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#44

Post by jrockway »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #29
aresant wrote: post #12

This response feels knee jerk. It's been demonstrated in countless other threads (1) and articles (2) how economically important it is to overbook. Overbooking is central to airline profitability and their ability to provide flexibility - like partial refunds, or SW's "open tickets" policy on business select. As a consumer I appreciate these things and find them incredibly useful. United's response of "We'll push the…

> Overbooking is central to airline profitability and their ability to provide flexibility - like partial refunds, or SW's "open tickets" policy on business select. Are you sure of that? I would think that airline profitability is largely dictated by competitive forces, rather than the particulars of in which practices the overall industry is permitted to engage. (Note that I'm assuming a world where all airlines, or…

You're right that it's not intrinsically essential.

To an airline, a flight that leaves with an empty seat is basically throwing money away; that empty seat doesn't mean you can take less fuel, fewer flight crew members, or wear out the airplane less. Therefore, the empty seat saves the airline no money.

Furthermore, people often miss their flights.

Overbooking is one way to deal with these two assumptions. Assume a certain number of people will miss the flight, and sell some seats twice. Then you don't fly with money-eating empty seats, and you can lower the ticket price a bit, because you don't have to charge customers the cost of those statistically-likely empty seats.

There are other solutions. Don't offer any refunds or reaccommodation to no-shows. The seat was empty, but someone paid for it, so who cares? But customers probably don't like that. The might even like it less than overbooking. I don't know, I don't run an airline. There are options, but overbooking exists for a reason.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#45

Post by rdl »

sushid wrote: post #34
gizmo385 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, neither does JetBlue?

Edit: technically true but this fact is misleading. JetBlue's rate of passengers denied boarding is actually almost 3 times higher than United. [0] [0] https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/reso... Oct - Dec 2016 Passengers Denied Boarding by U.S. Airlines. United's Denied Boarding is 0.40 per 10k passengers vs JetBlue DB of 1.19 per 10k passengers.

JetBlue doesn't overbook, but they do swap A320 for A321 which have 50 fewer seats, fairly randomly, which leads to a lot of IDBs (you can ask for volunteers and get them when it's 1-5 people on a 200 person flight; you are probably screwed if you need 50 people on a 250 person flight.)

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#46

Post by [deleted] »

sushid wrote: post #34
gizmo385 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, neither does JetBlue?

Edit: technically true but this fact is misleading. JetBlue's rate of passengers denied boarding is actually almost 3 times higher than United. [0] [0] https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/reso... Oct - Dec 2016 Passengers Denied Boarding by U.S. Airlines. United's Denied Boarding is 0.40 per 10k passengers vs JetBlue DB of 1.19 per 10k passengers.

[deleted]

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#47

Post by robbiep »

aresant wrote: post #12

This response feels knee jerk. It's been demonstrated in countless other threads (1) and articles (2) how economically important it is to overbook. Overbooking is central to airline profitability and their ability to provide flexibility - like partial refunds, or SW's "open tickets" policy on business select. As a consumer I appreciate these things and find them incredibly useful. United's response of "We'll push the…

The only time I experience overbooking is when travelling in the US. I have never had someone come on a flight, or announce at the gate, that people must give up their seat and offer compo (something I have experienced on probably 20-30% of my domestic US flights).

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#48

Post by noer »

mwfunk wrote: post #8
nathancahill wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've flown very often with Southwest, and have rarely seen a completely full plane. The fullest I've seen still has one or two middle seats free at the very back of the plane.

I can't even remember the last time I was on a flight (Southwest included) that wasn't at capacity. I'm sure it depends on where you're flying to and from though.

The time of day matters though. Early morning departures, in my experience - especially on weekends, are almost always partially empty. Last week I flew on a flight that left at 5:55 AM that was less than half full (25 people on a regional jet). Last December I flew on a southwest flight that left at 7:45 AM that was about half full (probably 60 people on a 737).

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#49

Post by munificent »

I didn't follow the doctor-getting-dragged-off debacle closely but I have a question about the basic mechanics of what went down:

When I've been boarding on flights, they do the overbooking announcement at the gate and get volunteers to take later flights there, before people board. That makes a lot more sense because, in the event that no one volunteers, the airline can simply refuse to let certain people on.

They don't have to take the seat away from the passenger, they can just not to give it to them. Certainly, psychologically, people are a hell of a lot more attached to something once it's been given to them. I've toyed with the idea of taking a later flight before, but I'd be much less likely to do that once I was all settled into my seat.

How is it that the doctor was already seated when they "volunteered" him to not fly? That seems like the main fuck-up to me.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

gregschlom wrote: post #17

I have a question for the HN crowd: what would happen if airlines sold their seats at a fixed price and let customers resell them? For the sake of the discussion let's assume that all seats are in the same class (ie: economy) - there are no business / first class seats. So the idea would be: 1. All seats are sold at the same price, no matter how early or how late you buy. The price covers all the costs associated wit…

The way I understand it, if airlines were to offer fixed-price tickets with no class distinction, then there wouldn't be almost any flights - i.e. there's no point at which, for a typical flight, number of tickets bought * fixed price >= costs of fueling a jet and paying the crew.
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