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Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

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Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#11

Post by geofft »

devoply wrote: post #4

There should be a law to disclose this sort of information when you purchase a ticket... as well as the probability that you will be denied passage on the flight you are booking... In fact you could even make it so that they tell you the alternative you will be offered if that event occurs. They could even offer a premium price to guarantee your flight. The whole point is to make this process more predictable for tra…

I believe this is all in the contract of carriage, except for the probability (I'm not sure how you'd make a law mandating accurate estimates...). The problem is once you make laws to disclose all the things people need to know (and, to be clear, I think they genuinely do need to know a bunch of stuff) it turns into five pages of fine print.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#12

Post by Johnny555 »

stygiansonic wrote: post #2

Supposedly this is a company internal document[0], which states: Air Canada Revenue Management’s team is tasked with ensuring that the maximum revenue potential is made on each and every flight we operate. As it is known that a certain percentage of confirmed customers do not show for their flights, it is sometimes necessary to sell more seats than aircraft capacity. Revenue Management uses a sophisticated system tha…

All airlines do this... at least all USA airlines.

Hotels do it too -- in the 90's I worked for a hotel chain and helped integrate an airline vendor's revenue management system into the hotels central reservation system. Just like the airlines, hotels use past booking and seasonality/special event data to figure out how much to charge for rooms and how much to overbook to maximize revenue. Prior to the software, hotel managers did it manually.

Pretty much every industry that sells products subject to spoilage does it too -- a grocery store determines how much bread to order to avoid throwing away spoiled bread that didn't sell before it spoiled while avoiding running out (the equivalent of overbooking - the consumer wants it but can't have it). But grocery stores and airlines have the opposite problem - airlines can't control supply (in the short term), they have a fixed amount of product to sell so they primarily use pricing to control demand. Grocery stores control supply (within reason) so if demand changes, they can just order more or less product (but they can also alter pricing).

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#13

Post by Johnny555 »

jerkstate wrote: post #8

Overselling airline seats is pretty typical, but is there any reason for the check-in agent to give the ticketholder false hope? That just seems like passing the buck to the gate agent.

To sell the seat? If they tell the customer "Well, we're not sure if you have a seat, go ask the gate agent", then some customers will not want to bother and will cancel or change their flight -- so the airline goes from an overbooking situation to an underbooking situation, which costs the airline money.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#14

Post by Johnny555 »

ageek123 wrote: post #5

Wait, there are people who don't realize that when they can't get an assigned seat when they book the ticket (and it's not because they bought a special fare that doesn't allow a reserved seats), it's because the flight is oversold and they will be waitlisted for a seat? Every airline does this.

That's not always what it means when you have no seat assignment, especially with codeshares. I've bought tickets that had no assigned seat until checkin even though the flight was undersold.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#16

Post by peteretep »

ageek123 wrote: post #5

Wait, there are people who don't realize that when they can't get an assigned seat when they book the ticket (and it's not because they bought a special fare that doesn't allow a reserved seats), it's because the flight is oversold and they will be waitlisted for a seat? Every airline does this.

This is that whole feigned surprise thing that Recurse Center bans, isn’t it?

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#17

Post by Johnny555 »

devoply wrote: post #4

There should be a law to disclose this sort of information when you purchase a ticket... as well as the probability that you will be denied passage on the flight you are booking... In fact you could even make it so that they tell you the alternative you will be offered if that event occurs. They could even offer a premium price to guarantee your flight. The whole point is to make this process more predictable for tra…

They could even offer a premium price to guarantee your flight

They do -- they call it a "full fare ticket" -- airlines bend over backwards to accommodate these full fare fliers, even if it means bumping a paid economy passenger from the flight. Though it's a pretty steep fee -- usually several times more than the restricted fare.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#18

Post by peteretep »

bpye wrote: post #10
vkou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative that you're offered, 99% of the time, is a seat on the next flight.

Which is sort of workable if you are taking a direct flight to some location within the same continent and the next flight is in a couple of hours... If the next flight is the next day then that is pretty unacceptable.

Depends if they’re offering a hotel too. I’ve been voluntarily bumped more than once when I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be, and the compensation was definitely worth it

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#19

Post by joecool1029 »

On topic: Depends on where you are. I was on an overbooked flight with WOW in Iceland a few months back, they ultimately ended up getting me a seat, but there is sometime about compensation if they can't get you on a flight within X number of hours as a result of the fault of the airline. I'll try to dig it up again...

Somewhat unrelated but I had a terrible time with Air Canada a couple weeks ago for a YUL > EWR flight. Flight was canceled right before it took off. Gate agent was like "Sorry. Flight cancelled due to weather, here's a pamphlet with information and this is the exit door to lead you out of the departure area, we can't do anything for you."

That wasn't the issue. The issue was I had purchased liquor at duty free and needed to return it. I very clearly asked the gate agent if going out that door would still leave me the opportunity to return it. "Yes, no problem". Well the door dumps you into the connecting area of YUL, leaving you no way to re-enter the airport without passing through customs back into Canada and then security to go back to your flight again, where you now have to check the bag with liquor in it.

Gigantic pain in the ass. Wasted over two hours of my time from having to check and retrieve the bag. Fortunately, they were able to rebook me manually on the final flight out that day, automatically I would have been stuck 2 days.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#20

Post by useful »

If the plane was big enough and flights were booked more than a year in advance they would use actuary tables to be better at overselling flights.

I've worked for airlines so that they could do this, including Air Canada. Yield management is how airlines live and die.

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