Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
They also do it and it is part of the planning for, oversales. They know later flights will be heavier (e.g. approaching 5/6pm on Friday) so they oversell those flights and when the punters turn up they offer them the next flight instead so by the time they get to the 5/6 period, just about all the oversales are cleared and the previous 5-6 flights went out full.
Yes, it is called flow forward. I also mentioned that term on an earlier post.
Ansett did exactly the same thing but they called the pax 'jumpers' because they 'jumped' to an earlier flight.
with business class sales falling, with masses of people trying to upgrade, all airlines should overbook economy.
eg. if an aircraft has 400 seats (50C & 350Y) & if very few booking business, they should take 400+ economy bookings & then 50 or so people will have to be upgraded. Rather than upgrade someone for nothing, they should offer upgrades at check in for cash, then if they don't get enough takers, then then upgrade their best frequent flyers FOC. Flew Scoot OOL/SIN for $88 one way & they were even offering upgrades to their bus class, even when we were seated in economy. Nothing like last minute revenue. With the massive recession we had to have, some of the less switched on airlines won't survive.