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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

#51

Post by milquetoastaf »

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…

Yep you're right, everyone employed by Southwest to research and implement this apparently crucial detail of airline travel has no idea what they are doing and totally fucked up.

I honestly think hacker news should implement a feature where your comment is read back to you slowly before you post. Or you have to retype it out twice. Something, anything, to give the blowhards on here pause before they bless us with their cited[0] wisdom.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#53

Post by ewanm89 »

jrockway wrote: post #44
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, there is more fuel left in the tank, so there is less on the refill so yes it does save fuel, not much but it does save some. I prefer no refunds for no-show policy myself, that is how it works when I buy a ticket to see a play. Now refundable upto 48 hours before the flight might be even fairer.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#54

Post by toyg »

maccard wrote: post #18
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 main budget airline in Europe (Ryanair) doesn't overbook flights, and as far as I am aware never has done. They managed a net profit of 1.4 billion dollars last year.

Yep, the main difference in Ryanair's model is that basically all tickets are nonrefundable. This way, even if the plane leaves half-empty on the day despite being fully booked, it will have paid for itself - which is what should happen, really.

What you lose by renouncing overbooking is the ability to change your ticket without paying for it again (which is what happen with Ryanair - fees to alter bookings are so huge, it's cheaper to just buy a new ticket).

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#55

Post by justinpombrio »

munificent wrote: post #49

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 d…

> 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.

Yes, it was. Well, that and when he was beaten bloody by the police.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#56

Post by Veratyr »

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…

To offer a counterpoint, Southwest also offers the worst boarding procedure, unless travelling alone or with kids. My wife and I were going on vacation and it was impossible to get seats together as we were pretty far back in the assigned line positions and by the time we got on the plane, there were no two vacant seats next to each other.

After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us further ahead in the line but we tried that, checking in within minutes of checkin opening and were still pretty far back in the lines.

We ended up buying an "upgrade" to get us ahead in the line and next to each other. For us to do that for both flights, we'd have been paying ~50% extra for a feature that comes by default with all other airlines.

Also, while interacting with Southwest's famously "better", more "caring" staff, we were met with total disinterest and absolutely no sympathy.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#57

Post by johngalt »

The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked.

I've seen a number of overbooked southwest flights and people can't line up fast enough for a $300 flight credit + next available flight. I can't imagine it ever going over $1k.

IMHO if any airline should continue overbooking it's SWA. No first class, no assigned seats. Most of the flights are short range with multiple flights options every day. You're much more likely to agree to switch to the next flight if it means only waiting 2hrs.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#58

Post by rhino369 »

koolba wrote: post #22
jemfinch wrote: post #2

Does that mean ticket prices will increase?

Southwest already allows cancelling your ticket up to the last minute for a future credit so presumably most people that will miss the flight do so already. I wouldn't expect this impacts their fares much, if at all. Now if United, AA, or other large airlines that don't offer cancellation did this, that'd be another story.

>Southwest already allows cancelling your ticket up to the last minute for a future credit so presumably most people that will miss the flight do so already. I wouldn't expect this impacts their fares much, if at all.

One reason you'd let people cancel at the last minute is because you overbook flights. If you have 100 seats, book 105 people and then 4 cancel, that cancellation didn't cost anything.

If you book 100 people and turned away other passengers, then 4 people cancel at the last minute, now you lost 4 sales.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#59

Post by jowiar »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #33
jowiar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is whether you are fundamentally buying a seat on a particular plane, or transit from point A to point B. Almost all simple solutions re: air travel break down once connections get involved.

Also breaks down for equipment swaps. If we view seats on a given flight as assets that can be resold, there's a lot of ways that normal (even understandable) airline operations can "devalue" those assets, and sorting that out legally would be an amazing mess.

Pretty much any American airline that provides "better" service generally does something along the lines of having a very limited coverage map and a more-or-less a uniform fleet.

Most problems with air travel are "last mile" problems, with "last mile" is defined as flying to a location that does not have a critical mass of service to really be a "full service" city.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#60

Post by pdelbarba »

loeg wrote: post #37
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…

Why cap at $10,000? There needn't be any cap.

If it gets really high, I imagine passengers would do their best to drive it up. Would you volunteer if the offer was $2k out of a $100k vs a $10k pool? It defies classic game theory to an extent, but humans like to roll the dice.
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