No show passenger

[witzer]

This is my first post and I hope I chose the right forum...

I am writing my diploma thesis about airport operations and there is one question left. I am searching for rate of no show passenger who have checked-in at the counter but do not appear at the boarding gate. It would be great if someone is able to support me in this case with links or name of studies. Thanks a lot!

[Avman]

You may also want to look into Day Return pax (on flexible fares) who check-in for both the outward and return flights - then fail to show up for the expected return leg (turning up later for a later flight).

[WHBM]

Witzer, welcome to PPRuNe.

Not just the rate of no show but the reasons as well.

Get hacked off with statements of some that pax have "chosen not to travel with us today" when the real reason is that a number of pax are stuck in the security queue due to security not providing sufficient resources for this. Whose fault is this ?

Then there are terminal gate displays with a notice "pax must be at gate 40 minutes before departure or will be denied boarding", yet are still stating "wait in lounge" at departure time. In a few minutes (or it could be a couple of hours) this will then flip through Gate XX to Final Boarding in short order. Just to aid this process the bulk of the seats in the 'lounge' facing the displays have also been removed so pax will while away the time in the shops instead. Sound familiar, Heathrow T1 management ? There was a time when announcements were made simultaneously with gates being posted. Then this was abandoned. Fine (and probably impractical now) for normal circumstances, still valuable when departures become disorganised.

Then there are the displays which state "Final boarding" at T-40 when the inbound aircraft has not even arrived on stand. Stansted is a constant miscreant here. Regular pax (you know, the ones who make up the bulk of the revenue) eventually get wise to this being a nonsense. Then one day it's a bus gate and the 40 minutes are needed, but the pax are not all there. Whose fault is this ?

Giving out both legs of boarding passes on a day return, and/or OLCI, where the first you know the pax is about is when their BP is collected on boarding, is another source of absence. A telephone number to report being delayed could be printed on the BP, but it is not. Of course whether such a number would ever be answered and/or anything done about it is another matter. And we are all encouraged to use public transport to the airport nowadays, the train running in tunnels out of reach of phone signals.

By the way (speaking of OLCI), Checking In At The Counter, as described in the original post, is regarded by airline management with anathema nowadays. It will soon be OLCI only. What will that do to the no-show figures ?

It's amazing as many pax turn up at the gate as actually do !

[radeng]

At Stockholm Arlanda, the BA flights are announced in the Business Class Lounge right at the last moment and you have to leg it like mad - and you still keep them waiting for you!

[PAXboy]

Welcome aboard witzer and this is probably the best place to ask your question. We do get staff and crew from all areas passing through the cabin.

Random comment:
Commercial aviation is possibly the only business where it is always the customer's fault ... :hmm:

[10secondsurvey]

WHBM

I agree with every word you have written. Saved me lots of typing.

[witzer]

Thanks for your answers, now I see that there are a lot of factors for no show passengers.

But for my diploma thesis I have to narrow down the no show passenger situation. It is important to get a feeling that x% of the passenger with baggage which is checked in and must be found and unloaded before departure. E. g. I heared that it is really common that delays result from these no show pax. Perhaps, there is a rate of 0,2% of all pax are no show pax... I know it's very difficult but it is so important for me

[WHBM]

I'll give you an empirical guess based on nothing more than being a frequent pax :

Long haul affected much more than short haul.

Departing from base affected more than returning to base (makes me think that connecting pax are the issue).

Experience with BA long haul departing Heathrow is that easily 1 in 3 departures it is mentioned by the skipper as a reason for departure delay.

This takes no account of bags pulled before time, times when it is not mentioned, etc.

If you are looking at rates you need to consider both rate per pax and rate per departure. If BA long haul no-show rate was 1:600 and typical load was 300 pax, then it's a 1:2 chance of having to pull at least one bag (someone statistical may correct me on the calculation basis). I get the feeling its worse than that.

It's like assessing the rate for needing to do medical diversions - the larger the aircraft the more likely it is to happen.

[liquid sunshine]

In my experience (no specific stats) I belive the figures pax booked but no show probably runs at about 10% on long haul & anything up to 15-20 % on short haul trunk routes. OLCI pax would have to be included in the above figures but for pax that have checked in at the airport the no-show rates at the gate are not partucularly high we usually manage to round up most people eventually. You also have to weigh up the hassle of off loading pax as opposed to taking a delay whilst you track them down. On larger aircraft where the bags are loaded in ULD's as opposed to being bulk loaded it can take up to 20 mins to off load bags if you have to remove up to 6 bins to get to the one containing the pax bags. On short haul a/c where the bags are bulk loaded no show bags can be off loaded much more quickly and consequently no-show pax are more likely to be left behind whereas on long haul flts it can be a consedable undertaking to offl load no shows. Maybe there is someone out there who works in revenue management who might be able to provide some formal stats as most airlines spend a lot of time & money managing pax loads to avoid flying with empty seats.

[Midland 331]

No-show rates vary per route, flight and day of the week. There's no set percentage.

Many, many times I've had to explain "the science of overbooking" to bumped passengers...

Extremes:- I once got one of the last seats on a Gatwick-Lagos (on a staff ticket) which had 350 sold for a 225-seat (IIRC - DC10) aircraft....

r

[Leezyjet]

In my experience, most often it tends to be single passengers who fail to show up rather than those travelling together.

Probably because in a group, there will always be someone keeping an eye on the time/screens etc. but a single person can get distracted in the shops/fall asleep and loose track of time.

At LHR there are also a few passengers who decide to just "pop" into London between connecting flights not realising how far it is and how long public transport can take, then missing their flights as a result.

:\

[PAXboy]

The original question was:
... rate of no show passenger who have checked-in at the counter but do not appear at the boarding gate.

My GUESS is very few. On one occasions I was that 'Last call for Mr PaxBoy as we are waiting to depart" and with the (then) Mrs PB, we legged it to the gate. That was over 20 years ago and I have not done it since.

It is possible that some are repeat offenders but most will do it once and realise the problems they nearly caused for themself - they will tend to ignore the actual problems they caused others. :hmm:

When watching UK programmes like 'Airport' and 'Airline' [ITV] you you cannot be sure of how frequent a problem it is - because the programme has been edited to show you the juicy bits of people being late to the gate.

One of the few people in PPRuNe that could answer your question is [B]Bealine as he works on check-in and has been in the airline world for quite a while but he is absent from the forum at the moment. Perhaps send him a Private Message and see if he can help.

[Midland 331]

Any decent check-in bod can spot a likely culprit, often drunk, or old and confused, or just plain dopey or inexperienced.

During my time on the front line, albeit at a small regional airport, we had a good idea of who was going to cause us a problem.

r