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Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

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Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#111

Post by vannevar »

mseebach wrote: post #110
vannevar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely wrong, as many passengers do not make it to a flight, without being bumped. Based on personal experience, I doubt this is true. Ask yourself how many times have you done this? I've flown hundreds of times, but have only missed a handful of flights. So the collision rate should be very close to the actual overbooking rate. I haven't been able to find any figures on the actual rate of overbooking. Bu…

You're just assuming overbooking away on a single, personal anecdote. Here's mine: I fly a lot on flexible tickets, and in periods have "missed" almost every flight I was scheduled on. But even your experience works out to about 1% missed flights (order of magnitude on "handful"/"hundreds"). If that pans out as average, then airlines should overbook each flight by a couple of seats, and expect to have to bump very fe…

Not an anecdote, just a reasonable assumption in the face of a lack of actual data. With your full fare tickets, you say that there have been "periods" where you missed a lot of flights. How many overall? One in a hundred? One in ten flights you've ever booked? I suspect that if you add them all up, you'll find that your experience is not that far from mine. We tend to recall aberrations better than the routine outcome.

Eliminating the fraud exemption for airlines wouldn't necessarily mean removing seats; as I pointed out, the seats could be filled with discounted standbys.

Lots of other businesses sell seats without overbooking, I hardly think it's an unsolvable problem. Airlines got a fraud exemption because they could, not because it was the only solution to the problem.

Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#112

Post by hueving »

bogomipz wrote: post #68
hueving wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are simply enabling airlines to continue this unethical practice Don't project your morals onto the rest of us. As a frequent flyer who likes to travel I love this practice. It means lower prices overall and it gives me the opportunity to fly for free somewhere else later if I volunteer out. With the switch to real cash compensation on some airlines, I can even make money if I don't feel like using it to fly. I…

>"Don't project your morals onto the rest of us" I'm not projecting "my" morals onto anybody. Intentionally overbooking and knowing full well that you are going to bring inconvenience and stress to people is just plain fucked up. That's not really a grey area. If you bought a ticket to a movie and then were asked to leave the theater before the movie started in order to make room for someone else who bought a ticket…

> Intentionally overbooking and knowing full well that you are going to bring inconvenience and stress to people is just plain fucked up. That's not really a grey area.

First, passengers who buy refundable seats frequently cancel last minute to take a later flight. The airline can somewhat estimate how many cancellations any given flight will have and overbook by some amount less than that. This happens all of the time (nearly every close to full flight you are on will have had this happen) and you don't even know about it. You just benefit from it in the reduced fare due to the increased margin this provides.

Second, even if more people show up than projected, this doesn't bring "inconvenience or stress" to anyone in the vast majority of cases because they begin an auction to give up seats. The people who volunteer out come out ahead winning an auction they willfully participated in by selecting their own price. Delta will bid up to $10,000[1] to get people to release their seats. That's more than a month's salary for most people in the US just to take a later flight. Nobody feels like they got screwed in the volunteer situation, because they volunteered in exchange for the money/flight voucher.

>Here you can read all about it:

Cool, you sent an article echoing what I already said about bad actors like United's regional carrier who don't define the norm. That case is not what happens in the vast majority of overbooking situations.

You ignored what I said to make what point? You are intentionally confusing forced removal with the standard case for overbooking where people volunteer out and come ahead.

>I'm not projecting "my" morals onto anybody.

These are your moral issues which seem to be driven by ignorance of how overbooking works in 99%+ of the cases. I suspect you have flown very little or have never paid attention at the gate. Please don't armchair referee an industry practice you don't understand that benefits both consumers and the airlines in all but pathological cases.

1. http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/news/companies/delta-10000-o...

Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#113

Post by hueving »

bogomipz wrote: post #102
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a significant fraction of people won’t show up AND a significant fraction of those who do show up will have flexible plans and be happy to take a later flight, “overbooking” seems a lot more reasonable.

>"If a significant fraction of people won’t show up ." I think its safe to say that there isn't a "significant fraction" of people who don't show up for their flights.

I think it's safe to say you don't understand why the refundable fare class exists then.

Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#114

Post by bogomipz »

wpietri wrote: post #106
bogomipz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Don't project your morals onto the rest of us" I'm not projecting "my" morals onto anybody. Intentionally overbooking and knowing full well that you are going to bring inconvenience and stress to people is just plain fucked up. That's not really a grey area. If you bought a ticket to a movie and then were asked to leave the theater before the movie started in order to make room for someone else who bought a ticket…

No, those are your morals. And you're projecting them on to everybody. "Just plain fucked up" is another way of expressing your personal values, not a rational argument. I get that you value the "but we had a deal" criterion for fairness above the other things people value in this situation. Which is fine! You do you. And I agree that forcible removal is a bad idea that we should ban. But booking so that the airplane…

>"No, those are your morals."

No its common decency and etiquette. These aren't "mine" they are social norms.

>"I get that you value the "but we had a deal" criterion for fairness above the other things people value in this situation"

Sure everybody is "fine" with this as long as its just chatter on HN. It's all optimization problems and capturing true market value etc. But I'm willing to bet that when you yourself are on the receiving end of an involuntary bump by an Airline your first thought is most certainly not "I'm fine with this."

Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#115

Post by ggm »

mseebach wrote: post #79
ggm wrote: post #63

The investment by non-US carriers intrigues me, because there is no significant overbooking problem worldwide: its a mostly US phenomenon as I understand it. The rebooking-because-cancelled, thats a huge problem anywhere. So, I suspect the JV partners are looking to benefits for unexpected surge loads and overflow from late/dropped flights in a tight jet schedule.

I think it's a media attention thing. Flights are overbooked all over the world, and people get involuntary bumped. I just did a couple of searches for "[lufthansa, british airways, qatar, emirates] overbooked", and it's not exactly unheard of. It's a relatively rare event, though, but one that caught US media attention due to the pretty gruesome removal of Dr Dao last year (which wasn't even an overbooking incident)…

"Flights are overbooked all over the world" Yes, but overall at a far lower intensity than in the US. I don't just mean 55/45 type things: I have flown continuously internationally for the last 20 years, worldwide, about 5-10 trips per year, and the only economy I have been bumped in was the USA. The data you gave about search matches in no way addresses the huge skew to events in the USA.

Contrariwise, the UK is the only economy I have used trains in, which routinely has major commuter train cancellations. The commonality here is a lack of capital investment and oversight

uniquely dense and complex nature of the US domestic network. More flights with more connections make for more uncertainty in the system, to which overbooking is an answer Yes. this I think is true. the US has far more dense flights, and has chosen overbooking as an answer but in no sense is it the answer to this problem: It's the one we've got. The regulator could have directed other approaches, but the cost consequences on airlines (who routinely seem to use chapter-11 methods to walk away from historical debt) would have been pretty bad. This answer maximises profit for airlines, at the expense of flyer convenience.

Re: Airlines Are Backing Volantio (YC W09), a Startup That Could Fix Overbooking

#116

Post by tpolzer »

kelnos wrote: post #74
jorvi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tickets should also be liberated from being person-bound. If I have to cancel a NL-CHN trip a week in advance, I lose most (if not all) of the money spent on it, and any recoups are in the form of vouchers. And the airline still resells the seat! However, if I could just sell the ticket on the secondary market, I’d recoup most of my costs.

I'm sympathetic to the ban on ticket transfers since allowing that would create a market for ticket scalpers. Buy up inventory on a popular route well enough in advance so the prices are low, wait until the flight fills up, and then resell tickets for a higher price. This is what currently happens with tickets to music and sporting events, and you end up with actual attendees spending more money than they'd otherwise…

But that is exactly how the market would look from the consumer side if the airlines had perfect information.
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