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Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

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Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#41

Post by kalleboo »

jtchang wrote: post #9

I'm not surprised airlines do this. I don't think it is just Air Canada. In a way it makes sense but it does make me think they are a bit greedy. If someone buys a ticket and does not show up for a flight then usually they don't get a refund/credit (or a crappy one: I'm looking at you United). But now the airline has an empty seat. The best thing to do is fill it. But you can't fill it the last moment so you need to…

> But you can't fill it the last moment

I remember as a kid flying "standby". You got a cheap ticket but had to sit around until a seat opened up. What killed standby tickets? Post-9/11 security hell?

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#42

Post by refurb »

cameldrv wrote: post #39

I've had an extremely bad experience with Air Canada that's eerily consistent with this article. Upgrade to business at the ticket counter, assigned seats, and then a red light and a sad noise from the ticket machine when I tried to board. Then a torrent of excuses, blame shifting, and rude behavior. This really soured me on Air Canada.

As a Canadian who flies a lot, Air Canada has absolutely the worst customer service. They make the “crappy” American carriers (United, etc) seem luxurious by comparison.

I remember one time connecting in to Vancouver and asking if I could could jump on the earlier flight rather than waiting 3 hours. Done this multiple times with US carriers if there is room. What do they care if the seat would have been empty otherwise?

I was informed by the AC agent that there would be a $175 fee for the ticket change. Plenty of other examples of rigidly following the rules even though it cost them nothing.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#43

Post by kalleboo »

joecool1029 wrote: post #19

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 fli…

> 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

EU air passenger rights https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#44

Post by vidarh »

elyobo wrote: post #33
hndamien wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done, Adioso was fantastic.

Indeed - I still use it (among others) more or less any time I'm looking for flights. It was tomhoward's cofounder Fenn Bailey that also first introduced me to "microcaching" with nginx via some blog post many years back, a trick which has been of much use over the years.

Microcaching is fantastically useful. Way back when, when Edgeio hosted Crunchboard (the Techcrunch job board), we added it to deal with the load it imposed. I don't remember if I'd read about it anywhere first, or was just desperately trying things to avoid it hammering our database.

[For anyone not clear on what is meant: Microcaching is the idea of doing caching with really short time intervals, maybe as low as a second. The point is to set the TTL for the cached data so short that users will rarely if ever notice stale data even for dynamically updated content. The upside is that even a 1 second cache time for a heavily requested page means only 1 request per second per frontend for that resources hits your backend, no matter how much your traffic increases. Super-short TTLs often allow you to cache resources that you otherwise couldn't, and still get a hard upper bound on the load they'll impose]

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#45

Post by TomVDB »

refurb wrote: post #42
cameldrv wrote: post #39

I've had an extremely bad experience with Air Canada that's eerily consistent with this article. Upgrade to business at the ticket counter, assigned seats, and then a red light and a sad noise from the ticket machine when I tried to board. Then a torrent of excuses, blame shifting, and rude behavior. This really soured me on Air Canada.

As a Canadian who flies a lot, Air Canada has absolutely the worst customer service. They make the “crappy” American carriers (United, etc) seem luxurious by comparison. I remember one time connecting in to Vancouver and asking if I could could jump on the earlier flight rather than waiting 3 hours. Done this multiple times with US carriers if there is room. What do they care if the seat would have been empty otherwi…

This used to work in the past in the US. But last 5 years or so, every single time I've asked this with major carriers in the US, I've been quoted similarly high change fees as well.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#46

Post by cperciva »

refurb wrote: post #42
cameldrv wrote: post #39

I've had an extremely bad experience with Air Canada that's eerily consistent with this article. Upgrade to business at the ticket counter, assigned seats, and then a red light and a sad noise from the ticket machine when I tried to board. Then a torrent of excuses, blame shifting, and rude behavior. This really soured me on Air Canada.

As a Canadian who flies a lot, Air Canada has absolutely the worst customer service. They make the “crappy” American carriers (United, etc) seem luxurious by comparison. I remember one time connecting in to Vancouver and asking if I could could jump on the earlier flight rather than waiting 3 hours. Done this multiple times with US carriers if there is room. What do they care if the seat would have been empty otherwi…

Probably you made the mistake of saying the word "change". If you want to change your ticket, i.e. get a guaranteed seat on a different flight, that costs money.

If you had asked to standby for the earlier flight, you would almost certainly have been told "ok we've put you on the list; check at the gate" with no charge.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#48

Post by hinkley »

jerkstate wrote: post #21
Johnny555 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I have checked in on oversold flights before but never has a check in agent ever told me "don't worry about it, you'll get a seat for sure" - they have always been honest about how the process will work at the gate and usually give me a decent guess at the likelihood that I'll get a seat, offer to rebook (usually you have to ask to have them look for flights on other carriers, but they are required to do that if…

I did get that assurance once, but I was flying to see a family member in the ICU at Christmas. Can’t recall now if they asked for volunteers but I do recall the complete lack of wiggle words calmed me down.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#49

Post by hinkley »

useful wrote: post #20

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.

I recall having a leg of my flight cancelled for mechanical issues. They sent the entire plane full of people to the ticket agent and somehow they miraculously found planes for everybody on the next two flights, same day, same airline.

A few of us commented on how convenient it was that the plane needed maintenance and three flights on the same route were only 2/3rds full. What are the odds, he asked sarcastically.

Re: Air Canada agents reveal overselling practices

#50

Post by jayalpha »

jayalpha wrote: post #38
kortilla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But from passengers' point of view, few people are willing to voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding, even if the offer is quite generous. This is blatantly false. I fly all the time and I see this happen about every other time at a neighboring gate. Gate agent announced flight is oversold, makes an offer. Several people volunteer. End of story. You…

"Then the stupidity of United and the ignorant backlash of the public ruined it. Infrequent fliers associated overselling with the United incident and completely ignored the functioning 99.9% of cases that benefited all fliers overall." The United incident had nothing to do with overbooking.

Why the downvote?

1. Unites flight was not overbooked. They wanted to put some of their own employees on this flight. This has nothing to do with overbooking.

2. Law stats that you can deny boarding if a flight is overbooked. Let someone on board and then throw him off the plane was definitely not within the scope of the law, even should the flight have been overbooked. Try to tell this to the authorities, "we let more people on board than seats available and had to remove some..". Good luck with that.

So based on 1 and 2 the airline was wise to settle with the guy ASAP since throwing him off the plane had nothing to do with overbooking, nor was it in any way covered by law.

Proof that you are an idiot. Downvote this :-)

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