seats on a flight

[plantzzman]

I have to ask this as its something I have thought about for ages.
Why do airlines over book their flights.
You have to pay in advance for your air ticket so the airlines have your money in their bank account.If you dont turn up they keep your money and should be able to fly cheaper as they need less fuel etc so have less costs.
So why do they over book flights leading many times to people missing out on a seat.leading to irate customers.If your aircraft has 300 seats sell 300 tickets-if the passanger dosnt turn up thats their problem.You have their money so in many respects your getting paid to do nothing.

[Little Blue]

Its the nature of the beast...
Always a percentage of the pax will be a no-show
so hence. the overbooking profile....
Of course, on the odd occasion., there will be a total show,
and then the fun starts...but rather over than under, eh??
;)

[jetstream7]

Plantzzman

Worst culprits for overbooking are full service airlines - plenty of passengers booked on fully flexible, fully refundable tickets, so if they don't show, the ticket price is refunded to the passenger - the airline does not get to keep the money.

The low cost carriers tend towards non refundable tickets and I'm sure at least one of them states they do not oversell seats? (Not aware of any easyJet/Ryanair/Jet2 etc stories about overbooking either....)

[Electric Sky]

It's simply down to competition and making money. If an airline knows it will get a percentage of no shows then it overbooks. This results in one of two things for the airline .... more pennies in it's pocket or the option to reduce fares to a lower price to beat your competitor who doesn't overbook. Until there is a law against it the airlines will always do it for these reasons.

Surprisingly I think, the no show predictions are usually right! However, as Little Blue says, when they are not ..... :oh:

ES ;)

[In trim]

No show rates on some routes at certain times of day can be well over 20-30% so the airline would be crazy to NOT oversell, knowing they would always be leaving with this proportion of empty seats.

As has been stated previously, lo-co airlines have zero or minimal overbooking policies as the fare structure creates a totally different overbooking profile.

[mutt]

We have some sectors which are usually overbooked by 50% and the aircraft still takeoffs with empty seats!


Mutt.

[surely not]

The reasons for pax not showing include: business not completed in time to catch flight, illness, death, passenger holds 3 bookings on 3 flights so as not to miss one.

I'm sure that the airlines would be glad to be rid of the large departments that are trying to work out the route profile of noshow and goshow pax.

Whilst it is pretty annoying when it does happen, in truth the number of times a flight actually goes over when overbooked is very small.

[APP Radar]

overbooking is a company policy.

Each company studies the passenger behaviour on a certain route and establishes a pattern.

For the same route different companies have diffierent no-show policies.

Some years ago on the route PDL-LIS (Ponta Delgada, Azores - Lisboa) TAP Air Portugal had a 'underbooking' policy.
For a 120 seats flight they only confirmed 117 seats. The 3 seats left only became available with supervisor's pemission one hour before the flight, seats were reserved for the transportation of sick people or government between the Azores and Mainland ...

[In trim]

As long as the likes of BA (and other 'traditional' airlines) have such ridiculous fare structures, no-show rates will be astronomical. 2 weeks ago I looked at fares on BA for a single sector from London to somewhere in France.

Requesting a single sector meant the system only showed availability in Club, and the fare (albeit fully flexible and refundable) was over £400

I immediately requested a quote for a return flight a few days later. It then opened up availability to all the various Apex fare structures, and I was quoted an outbound (on the same flight as above, but a non-flexible economy tkt) and return for £101.40

Now if you were Jo Public would you pay £400 or would you pay £100 and simply no-show for the return?

[mysecretsmile]

Full service airlines are always at the over booking game for reasons already clarified above.

Flybe is one of the low cost carriers that claims to have no overbooking on their flights.

Its a shame the same can't be said of BMI, they appear to have huge overbooking problems on their LHR-BHD service, which has been made worse in a short term change of aircraft from a A321 to a A320

[Exel]

I don't have a problem with overbooking as i have made numerous free trips across the pond thru compensation, just because i've built some flexibility into my itinerary............

For voluntarily off-loading myself from a JFK-LHR service i once received $950 in vouchers................i caught a flight 2 hours later !!!

I have also travelled to South Africa, Japan, HKG all for nothing thru voluntary offloads...............Keep it going PLEASE.