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In April 2017, United Express passenger David Dao was injured when he was forcibly dragged down the aisle of a flight while armed.
Since that tragic event, American airlines have chosen to use violence as a tool to manage inventory, instead eliminating or reducing the frequency with which they overbook flights, and opening their wallets wider when necessary to ensure enough people volunteer. Give up their seats on oversold flights.
Five years later, US airlines are bumping three times as many passengers as they did in 2018, according to the latest data from the DOT. In the year The rate in the first half of 2018 dropped to a fifth of what it was before the Dao incident. Today it has infiltrated more than 60% of what it was before the Dao.
To be sure, the overall batting figure is still small. Only one in 25,000 tickets on the 10 largest US airlines were forced to skip scheduled flights this year due to a sold-out flight.
Additionally, most of the bumps, commonly known as “involuntary denied boardings,” are made by just three carriers: American, Southwest, and Frontier.
They accounted for 91 percent of the 14,805 eclipses between January and June. And while American, with 4,995 crashes, was the most frequent offender, Frontier passengers were the most likely to be told they couldn’t fly. The discount carrier stranded 3.82 passengers per 10,000 people in the first half, more than six times the number at Southwest, the second-highest percentage and nearly 4,400 total problems. (DOT data on flights is reported by the airlines themselves.)
In contrast, Allegiant and Hawaiian did not experience a single passenger this mid-year, while Delta, which carries 77.4 million passengers on its mainline and regional flights, has experienced just two.
Airline industry analyst Bob Mann of RW Mann & Company said the airline’s various approaches reflect the dollar value of customer loyalty, as opposed to what could be the long-term problems of dissuading passengers.
“If you’re a pure price customer, you’re less likely to make your congestion a brand-end decision,” he said, comparing Delta’s and Frontier’s approaches. “If you’re a high-value customer — a business customer — and they kick you out of a meeting, it’s probably an end-of-product decision.”
For some, cramming is worth less.
Other factors guide airline strategies.
Ultralow-cost carrier Allegiant explained in a statement that it will not disrupt flights because it typically offers low-frequency routes that cannot be easily rebooked. Often, those routes only fly twice a week and depart from smaller airports not used by other carriers.
In the first half of the year, Allegiant 827 was voluntarily denied boarding, when passengers agreed to give up their reservations in exchange for accommodation and future flight vouchers. Each of the overbooked flights is the result of an aircraft replacement, the spokesman said, when a small plane is replaced by a larger plane scheduled to fly.
Frontier did not respond to requests for this report, but along with continued overbooking, the price cuts suggest the airline is less diligent than other carriers in seeking volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for pay. In the first half of the year, Frontier bumped 4,151 passengers, 5,986 people made voluntary reservations, and the airline had more than two injuries per three volunteers.
Even American and Southwest, the other two first-tier defenses this year, had much better ratios. American hit one passer for every 6.5 volunteers it had in the half year, and Southwest hit one passer for every 7.7 volunteers.
The obfuscation of DOT rules makes it less expensive for low-cost carriers than other airlines. Under the regulations, airlines must pay four times the price of a one-way ticket up to $1,550 if an emergency causes a delay of more than two hours. For Frontier, which sells cheap base fares and collects a particularly large amount of its revenue from add-ons like bag fees, compensation can often be less expensive than hiring a volunteer.
Another possibility is that, who said, Frontier has not developed technical processes to do a better job of recruiting volunteers.
“If it were my airline, I’d be trying to fix that,” he said of Frontier’s crash statistics. “This is a beautiful black eye.”
While airlines use overbooking as a hedge against the expectation that some customers will cancel or change their travel plans, Delta’s disruption approach provides evidence that airlines can avoid unauthorized boarding. In the first half of the year, the carrier found nearly 58,000 people voluntarily gave up seats, the most in the U.S. industry, with only two passengers bumped.
The service provider has developed a reputation for paying volunteers generously when needed. In late June, Delta reportedly offered $10,000 to passengers on a flight from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Minneapolis.
In an interview, Delta spokesman Morgan Durant would not confirm the report, although he discussed the carrier’s overall strategy to avoid congestion.
“We have procedures in place where we get to the mandatory numbers that customers voluntarily do,” he said. “This is the approach.”
Explanations from Southwest and AA
For the US and Southwest, numbers in the first half of this year show a significant increase compared to four years ago. Southwest’s rate of 0.6 per 10,000 passengers was more than four times higher than in the first half of 2018. America’s 0.57 per 10,000 passengers was nearly five times the 2018 rate.
In an email, Southwest said it does not overbook flights and that all situations where it ends up overselling planes are the result of aircraft replacements. The carrier had more than tripled sales in the first half of this year compared to 2018, along with an increase in crashes. Southwest said it has seen a jump in flight disruptions this year, partly due to the challenging pandemic operating environment, which explains both increases.
“We regret any time we make a flight adjustment that may require a customer to be accommodated on a different flight,” Southwest said.
In contrast to Southwest, American had 30 percent fewer sales in the first half of this year than it did in January through June 2018. In the year At the same time in 2018, the carrier hit just one passenger for every 50 volunteers.
In an email, American said the unauthorized boarding rate has varied significantly over the past several years, reaching 0.73 per 10,000 in the first half of 2019 before the outbreak peaked.
“American aims to provide a consistent customer experience, which includes booking a seat for every customer,” the carrier said. “Although the chances of being denied boarding are rare, unplanned events such as weather or mechanical needs can affect flights.”
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