Originally Posted by
PDR1
Passengers who get stuck in traffic, or are unable to travel due to injury/bereavement/illness etc have come to expect the right to a refund, or at least to be able to transfer to a different flight (varies with class of ticket). So the airline don't know whether they actually will have a full load of fare-paying passengers until just before closing the gate. The continual competitive pressure to reduce prices means hat flights are costed to break even on ever-higher levels of occupancy, so a few no-shows who then use their tickets on a later flight can result in a loss-making flight.
The airlines (like hotels) have tended to address this by deliberately over-selling flights on the assumption that some passengers won't turn up. Most of the time they get their sums right and it works, but sometimes it doesn't. You then have multiple people who all have what they see as a legitimate right to a seat. The airlines have a "priority" system which allows them to decide whose right is superior - types of ticket, frequent-flyer status, check-in times, lone or group bookings etc can all be a part of this, but if enopugh passengers have a "guaranteed reserved seat" or similar then they will end up in the auction to sell the deferment to the lowest bidder. If they get no bidders then (in many countries) there are legal provisions for compelling people to stand aside before boarding. If they do this before boarding then people will generally grumble, but comply. If they try to do it after boarding they have no legal basis and they find themselves splashed across social media and facing huge lawsuits.
There are alternatives:
1. They could put the prices up such that a flight with a 10% no-show still makes enough money to not need to fill the seats, and then over-selling would be unjustifiable and could be outlawed.
2. They could make all tickets non-refundable and non-transferable - you bought that seat and if you don't get to the airport on time then that's just tough. You could then (also) make over-selling illegal. It would mean the end of "flexible tickets" as we currently know them, and I could see a procession of injured/bereaved "victims" replacing the bumped passengers on social media, but as a system it would work.
3. You could enforce a strict legal "first come gets on the plane" physical check-in system, but that might be seen as discriminatory agianst those who use public transport that went on strike, or those who got stuck a mile away for an hour because of a crash on the motorway or a group of plainly stupid protestors.
Of course none of this applies to the UA incident at Chicago. That was just the airline forgetting that it had no legal right to deman boarded passengers give up their seats to dead-heading aircrew. That was just a mistake, and I suspect it's one that will cost them dearly.
So they just to to learn to make fewer mistakes...
PDR
Good points. However, there is already a system in place that automatically applies a protected status to certain classes of passenger - e.g. anyone with UMNR or WCHR/S/C on their booking will automatically get the status, certain grades of FF, etc.
The system basically does all that for the pax - I believe some of the systems are so sophisticated now like QF that they provide lists of flights, etc. if a flight is delayed and one click will re-accommodate pax plus messsage the baggage system to unload and re-load their bags, etc. so I wouldn't be surprised if it also highlights pax who have previously accepted voluntary re-accommodation.
The people that miss out are those that turn up later when the seats are starting to disappear (and there's no case for discrimination, the airline is not responsible for how people choose to get to the airport, just as they are not responsible for calling them to get out of bed and get ready on time to get to the airport) from the seat plan as the gap closes between seats freely available minus protected seats for pax not yet checked in but with protected status (if no seat is associated it will just protect 'a' seat in the class of travel). When this happens, if volunteers have been sought and their boarding passes held, the airline will start offloading them to standby and giving their seat to the pax remaining or will just ask them to wait if they don't want to lose the specific seats of the pax who've kindly volunteered. Normally it's pretty smooth and of course on many occasions there is room in P and J (or J and W), as applicable and pax will be upgraded on check in.
As for the airline having aright to request that someone disembark. Actually, they do have that right, it is amply covered by the carrier's legal rights BUT they do not have a right to physically abuse a passenger who refuses. Most airlines including UA have a policy to increase compensation until the pax agrees as the cost of the crew not flying (especially if it's a last minute thing after boarding has been completed - and believe me that DOES happen more often than you'd think) is hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of pax inconvenienced then it's just logical to offer say $2000 instead of $800 because you're going to save maybe $50000 or $100000 by doing so.
Fortunately, in the majority of circumstances, the notification is in sufficient time. Besides, there are myriad other ways this can happen... aircraft change en-route... for example. I had a situation once where an aircraft arrived from AKL and the engineer noted a slide was inoperative so 30-40 pax had to be offloaded once boarded, randomly (the pax sitting near the affected slide) and placed on the next service the an engineer had to be placed on the aircraft to repair at the outport. It's not exactly the same but it's splitting hairs when talking about operational requirements.