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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

#61
post #47
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).

I've had it happen several times flying out of London.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#62
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…

Is it possible to sell an overbook and a non-overbook class of tickets separately, and clearly delineate that to the customer as such?

That's usually called "standby"

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#63
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also won't have to pay the people who get bumped which will somewhat offset the lost revenue from overbooking.

I was under the impression they didn't actually pay people bumped, only gave them a voucher for their next flight that they probably won't even use. Do they actually give cash?

They give flight vouchers, but they often have other direct expenses like hotel accommodations and food.

The last time I was bumped it was ~$600 airline voucher, transportation to/from a ski resort (a perk of being bumped in the mountains!), a room for the night and a good meal voucher to cover dinner and breakfast the next day. Plus they still flew me out the next day and took care of rebooking the connection on another airline. I don't know exactly how much it cost them, but I made out like a bandit.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#64
post #2

Does that mean ticket prices will increase?

I don't see how it could. Only a handful of people on any one flight are ever bumped, on average. The bumped are normally put on other flights. The only 'win' is where someone doesn't show and also doesn't fly or get a refund. I cannot see how it is more than 1 or 2% of revenue. That said, perhaps I am dead wrong and overbooking is being used for darker purposes. Perhaps they are deliberately overselling flights at p…

Given the reason that airlines employ overselling, you would have to expect that it would impact the airline profitability, which could in theory lead to an increase in ticket prices. The bet SWA is making is that the revenue gain from overbooking is smaller than the consequential losses from bad publicity. Just think about the downside to United based on their share price alone, and now the increased focus that is on the 'good conduct' w.r.t bumping passengers in the light of it.

The maths of overbooking is that if you have 100 bookings on a 100 seater flight and 97 passengers show up then perhaps you could have sold 103 tickets and still not have to bump anyone. In this case you have increased revenue by 3% without an increase in costs. This can either manifest itself in an increased profit or, on a competitive route, lower ticket prices.

Of course, there will be variations in the number of people who show up and this can lead to more passengers arriving at the airport than there are seats on the plane. In this case, there is a cost to the airline, and perhaps in this big optimisation problem there are some airlines that see a bigger payoff in overbooking and bumping than avoiding overselling and minimising bumping.

I don't know about budget airlines, but full service you might expect somewhere in the region of 5% overselling. For budget, I would expect it to be higher as tickets are cheaper so passengers have less to lose by not showing up.

Nonetheless, even if it were a 1-2% increase in revenue, it would have a much higher impact on profitability. On a budget route, you could have $500 profit per flight, say a couple of dollars per passenger. Every extra ticket that gets sold that the airline doesn't have to pay costs for is a big deal, and part of the optimisations that allow airlines to offer lower fares.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#65

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…

>that empty seat doesn't mean you can take less fuel

I was under the impression that the fuel load for each flight is calculated based on a formula that averages the weight for each passenger and their expected luggage. Fewer passengers than expected = more fuel left over after the flight.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#66

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…

I'm an Alaska Airlines loyalist, I don't like the "flying bus" approach to boarding.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#67
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…

[deleted]

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#68
There is no "win" for the consumer here, same as when airlines decide to re-provide free food or free checked bags - these things get baked into the price of tickets, nothing is free. They are marketing. Rather than spend a million on ads, they spend a million on less efficient flights (by not overbooking), but hopefully getting more customers than ads would have gotten given this is a hot-button topic.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#69
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…

While I generally agree -- Southwest is more of a budget airline, so it may not be subject to the same magnitude of loss from people missing/skipping their flights. I could see the United demographic having far more no-shows.

For those who aren't aware, airlines overbook because there are, on average, a significant number of people who miss or skip their flights. It's wasteful (and bad business) to leave those seats empty when instead, you can overbook and have an extremely low percentage of flights end up without enough seats.

Edit: as others mentioned, overbooking also allows airlines to be more flexible with refunds.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#70
post #56

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 fu…

The reason that checking in earlier doesn't get you the first spot in line isn't that the tickets go really fast like concert tickets. It's because customers who are on a connecting flight can check in 24 hours before their first flight and therefore more than 24 hours before their connection, giving them priority. I almost always have a better seat on my second flight than my first on Southwest.

This isn't a bad strategy by them as it tends to give better seats to people on long itineraries who have been waiting around, and since those people fly long distances they are also high-value customers.

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