Overbooking vs. waitlists
 

Why do airlines overbook?

The best reason is that since usually some passengers do not show up, overbooking enables the airline to let passengers fly who otherwise would have been turned down as the plane was sold out already.

But when the airline then overbooks, and more passengers show up than expevcted, what then about the original passengers? The sense of the notion of overbooking is that all booked passengers are equal. Thus, overbooking puts the existing passengers deliberately at a jeopardy.

Would it not be more logical, once a flight is sold out, to respect the existing passengers and to put the others who wish to fly on waitlist of some sort, so that in case of a full aircraft, all the original confirmed passengers are assured of places?

Yes, airplanes may in any case be in a situation where they either cannot fly or should not fly for reasons like weather or technical mishaps.

But does the fact that airlines cannot in any case ensure seats for sound safety reason mean that they should maliciously risk the tickets on the flights they do operate?

Egad.... not in here, too???? :ooh:

Your post does not make a lot of sense and it appears you have complete failed to understand the reasons of overbooking.

Having had access to BA booking systems for over 5 years, their Revenue Management system and department is impressive. They NEED to overbook depending on many variables like time of day, city pair, time of year, available seats in Business/ First, group bookings, and many many other factors. They almost always get it right. Without overbookings, planes would depart with on average 10% less passengers than actually booked. In the RARE event that more passengers who up, volunteers are asked to come forward for alternative travel route / time in exchange for compensation. Everyone wins, that is the message. Some flights will be overbooked by as much as 40-50 seats on long haul flights and still leave with empty seats.

chornedsnorkack If you would like ticket prices to rise sharply and ensure that everyone is willing to pay the higher fares, then I am sure the carriers will implement your idea.

Since ALL the carriers in the world operate overbooking, then there is clue about human behaviour in the world.

By the way, this subject has been debated in PPRuNe countless times and if you search for the threads, you will get all the permutations. Overbooking was something of a problem 20 years ago when it had to be calculated by hand and updated once a quarter or so. But the computer hard/software available now is remarkably clever and learns from each and every flight. (I sit to be corrected)

Hold on - I don't think we should be too harsh on this question.

I don't read the OP as asking "Why do airlines overbook?"

The way I read it, I think the question is "In order to manage the problem that currently leads to airlines overbooking, wouldn't it be better to use the tool of a waitlist rather than the overbooking tool?" And I think that this is a question worth discussing.

FWIW, I think that the answers to this are both commercial and practical.

Take a passenger who books (and now gets a confirmed reservation) at a time when his flight is already overbooked. The way things work, he is almost certain to get away on his flight as booked, as will everyone else who actually turns up for the flight. It makes no difference to him or to any of his fellow passengers whether his confirmed reservation was originally an overbooking or not.

The commercial side is this: If the airline offers him a confirmed reservation, he is commercially captured. If the airline can only offer him a waitlist, he will be casting around looking for an alternative carrier that can offer him a confirmed reservation. Although there would be no practical difference between a confirmed reservation and a waitlist with the original carrier, the original carrier is more likely to lose him as a customer if it only offers a waitlist. So confirming the reservation makes more commercial sense, and the passenger will almost certainly fly as booked.

There is also a practical side: If the airline merely waitlists, when it becomes able to confirm the reservation it will have to contact the passenger to notify that, and then find out whether the passenger still wants the reservation confirmed. This is what airlines already do when they waitlist. The administrative burden would be hugely increased if no overbookings could be taken, thus pushing up costs for everyone. Further, it is doubtful that all waitlists would still want to fly, so the relationship between the expressions of interest in a flight (confirmed reservations + waitlists) and the number of bottoms in seats when the flight departs would become even more volatile than it now is.

Contrast the current practical situation: The airline holds x number of confirmed reservations. Those who cancel will contact the airline to cancel. Those who no-show will be detected at the airport. Those who want to fly will turn up and check-in. This is much simpler - especially when virtually everyone gets to fly as booked.

BTW: I was once on a flight which was overbooked by well over 100 in economy alone (I know someone at this airline who has access to the figures). This was common at that airline for that route. On the actual flight, it was only about 90% full in economy and I had an empty seat next to me. That's how bad the situation can be.

Overbooking and alternatives...
 

Hm, a simple counterexample. Several low-cost-carriers are said not to overbook at all. They also have way lower fares and ticket prices.

Which is the cause and which is the consequence here?

Also I looked into it and found that there used to be and sometimes is a concept called "standby ticket". Where is it used, and how does it compare with overbooking in terms of commitment to passengers?

Ah, standby. Now in the uk it is not really so common, unless you are travelling on a full fare ticket for the cabin you wish to travel in. The idea is this, you book for a certain flight, but your ticket can be used on any other flight on the same city pair or fare, if the flight has empty seats, on you go, if not you standby until flight closeout. As so few pax are willing to fork out for a full fare ticket versus a cheapy confirmed, we are back to overbooking again.
In the US it is possible to buy a revenue standby, I'll hand this over to others for other countries and their rules and regs regarding standby. Then you have the staff that travel on standby, they are on duty or leisure travel and this does occur all over the world. Standby passengers do not account for the booking figure on any flight, because in theory they do not exist until the door is closed and the final figures accounted for. Now does everybody get that? Good.

Overbooking works, it is very rare that you will see people being "bumped". We regularly over book by between 10 and 80 on our longhauls and still go with empty seats and accommodate staff standbys.

Staff standby on duty?
 

I see that it makes perfect sense for staff traveling on leisure to get standby tickets - filling an empty seat costs roughly the additional fuel spent, and staff are the people who know the rules well and make little trouble, so it makes sense to reward them with cheap standby tickets.

But why on duty travel? Logically, the staff on duty should get confirmed seats and bump paying passengers if necessary... after all, the question is either bump one passenger to get space for a pilot or mechanic, or ground a whole plane they are travelling to get off the ground.

Some airlines ARE operating this waiting list idea!!!
PIA, eventhough on their tickets have overbooking warnings, will put you on a waiting list if the aircraft is full. and if someone doesn't turn up then the waiting list Pax are isseued their boarding passes.
you can check seat availability and and if you are booking online, it actually tells you weather you have a confirmed seat or weather you are in waiting list.
A few years ago they denied my elder brother,with OK booking, boarding at LHE on Amsterdam bound flight only to accomadate someone with waiting ticket and friends in higher places...And as a result my father took them to a Pakistani court and received an appology plus a return ticket for ANY international journey plus court costs!!!
So my point is that waiting list type tickets will only work if airlines respect them and not for likes of PIA!!!!

To add some more weight to Globaliser's point about waitlists being practical:

In my experience a reasonably high proportion of people who are added to the waitlist get confirmed (well over half). Of the people who get confirmed the majority (well over three quarters) go on to either cancel this booking or noshow. The result is to tie up inventory needlessly. There is a much better chance of the seat actually being used simply by offering it in open availability rather than confirming people from waitlists.

At the airport processing waitlists is also time consuming and, if you've seen it in practice at many airports around the world, you'll no doubt agree it can be a complete uncontrolled scrum!

Paxboy,

Could I just give a gentle reminder that not all airlines overbook. LCC's don't. A bit ironic really.

Luckily BA as far as I'm concerned don't fly point-to-point (at least to the destinations I travel to) so I no longer have to put up with overbooking as I did in the past. (Even with the Huge incentives they provided).

Whilst I agree that this topic has been debated to death in the past on these forums, I would just like to point out that the commercial situation is subject to the increasing proportion of non-refundable tickets being issued per flight. The reason why LCCs do not overbook is that they generally have all tickets non-refundable; to book more than the total number of flight seats on that basis would be tantamount to fraud IMHO.

As "normal" carriers increase the percentage of non-refundables in their mix, then this needs to be taken into account in their over-booking algorithm. As a pax I would be more than annoyed if I turned up on time for a flight with a non-refundable ticket and was refused boarding. In fact this very thing happened to me a year ago on a ferry in Scotland, and I and the other pax affected were able successfully to convince the operator that it had a legal obligation to find and operate an additional vessel to get us back to the mainland there and then, which is precisely what it did!

Refunds and no-shows
 

True, if passenger tickets include the flexibility of not turning up without notice to airline and afterwards rebooking or refunding the ticket, then it is rather difficult for the airline to cater for people wanting to fly when they deem fit.

Therefore, a part of no-shows are attributable to passengers who are irresponsible/make full use of the flexibility provided with the tickets. Maybe a large part of no-shows.

But even if missing a plane means forfeiting the ticket clean away, there will be some passengers who cannot show up or inform the airline because of unavoidable ill fortune. Therefore, the question is, if a flight is sold out and there are people needing to fly left over, what to do in the likely chance that some passengers miss the plane? Every missing passenger means another passenger who does not get the opportunity to fly.

LCC's don't overbook because they fly routes which are not susceptible to the type of passenger who no shows. If you were to look at the overbooking profile for BA or any other full service carrier on say London to Amsterdam I think you would find that they only overbook to a very small number because the passenger historic profile on the route is that they will turn up for the flight.
On routes to Africa and South America the overbooking profile is much higher because the historic passenger profile is that large numbers will be unable to travel on the flight they have booked for many reasons. There aren't any locos on these routes so the argument about locos not overbooking is specious at best, and cantankerous at worst.