WN to cease overbooking flights

Old Apr 28, 2017, 2:17 am
  #31  
 
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Originally Posted by pinniped
Feels like an overreaction to me. UA3411 had nothing to do with overbooking.

Unintended consequence #1 : I'm a business traveler, and I want to buy BS/AT three days before my flight, but in the future more flights will show "sold out" where today I would have been able to buy a date/time I wanted, albeit at a very hefty price.

Unintended (or maybe intended?) consequence #2 : I'm a leisure traveler, just looking for a $59 fare far in advance, willing to travel anytime. That fare is now gone, because the revenue model has to change to get more out of the medium to high fares since they can't oversell at the AT/BS level anymore.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but I don't see how the math works any other way. I know the CEO isn't going to take a pay cut to fund it.
(1) No, UA3411 didn't have to do with an overbooking scenario, but I think it's fair to say that it has been conflated with such in the public mind.
(2) Moreover, overbooking-related complaints are nothing new.
(3) I doubt it would be WN to introduce it, but what about an airline offering a "guaranteed day only" ticket or something similar? You're guaranteed a seat on a flight on a given day (or within a given time range on a given day) when you book, but you're not told which flight you're assigned to until a certain time before (say, 72 hours out) and you're #1 for reaccomodation. Basically an advance-purchase variant on a standby ticket. In that scenario, you'd still have the $59 cheapo fare, but you wouldn't know if you were on the 0600 or 0900 flight.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 8:22 am
  #32  
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Originally Posted by GrayAnderson
(1) No, UA3411 didn't have to do with an overbooking scenario, but I think it's fair to say that it has been conflated with such in the public mind.
(2) Moreover, overbooking-related complaints are nothing new.
(3) I doubt it would be WN to introduce it, but what about an airline offering a "guaranteed day only" ticket or something similar? You're guaranteed a seat on a flight on a given day (or within a given time range on a given day) when you book, but you're not told which flight you're assigned to until a certain time before (say, 72 hours out) and you're #1 for reaccomodation. Basically an advance-purchase variant on a standby ticket. In that scenario, you'd still have the $59 cheapo fare, but you wouldn't know if you were on the 0600 or 0900 flight.
(1) It became conflated in the public mind because the media always always always butchers aviation-related stories, often badly. Recently, they've become fixated on Delta's announcement of a $10,000 VDB cap. Great PR by Delta, and nobody anywhere, ever, is getting $10,000 per person on a one-flight VDB.

(2) Complaints about overbooking are usually less about the concept itself and more about how the pathetically-low regulated IDB payouts enable airlines to make very trivial passes at VDB in some cases. And sadly, the *worst* situations (overnight delays) seem to be where the airlines make the *least* effort to VDB. This, more than anything else, is the lesson from flight 3411. United only made a token offer for VDB and then went straight to summoning the goons to IDB.

(3) Essentially a Priceline-type offering. I've never booked an airline flight through Priceline, but I could see doing this *within* a single airline on routes where there was some degree of predictability for what you'd get. (It'd obviously have to be an extremely low fare - a Spirit-level fare.) Maybe certain transcon routes on Southwest since you know they don't do redeyes?
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 9:36 am
  #33  
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Originally Posted by pinniped
What is the distinction in WN's nomenclature? If a plane holds 137 and they sell 138 confirmed tickets, is that overbooked or overcapacity? Is "overcapacity" a term intended to cover for last-minute crew movements? e.g., they sell 137 but are willing to VDB a few to make room for crew?

In WN's operations, don't crew stay with their aircraft as it flies along a point-to-point route? It would seem like they'd have fewer issues with crew movement than a hub-spoke airline.
Whicn plane? The plane they thought would fly at booking time or the plane that's there at the airport gate?

That's the problem. Not every plane in Southwest's fleet has exactly the same number of seats, does it? And there's no guarantee that the plane they expected to be your plane is the one that's actually going to be there at the gate.

Because Southwest doesn't assign seats, most people don't know exactly which plane they're supposed to be on. At other airlines, I'm very aware of which exact configuration of the plane I' booked on, months ahead, because I see a seat map when booking at other airlines (and when reviewing my reservation).

But just because Southwest doesn't make it obvious by publishing seat maps doesn't mean that Southwest doesn't fly different planes with different configurations. And thus it's not obvious to the average Southwest flyer if a slightly smaller plane has been substituted at a late stage unless it causes over-capacity and the ramifications there-of.

Yes, I realize Southwest is an all-737 airline. But so is [pre-merger] Alaska, and with Alaska I know ahead of time whether it's a 737-900 or -800 or whatever that I'm scheduled to fly on, if it's a distinction that affect seat maps.

And, btw, yes, there are last-minute plane-type substitutions at other airlines sometimes too, but there it's much more obvious, because suddenly lots of people lose their assignment and have to get new seats assigned. So it's much more obvious there (if you're pay attention to what's happening at the gate, anyway) than it might be at Southwest where all it affects is a single count.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 11:29 am
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Originally Posted by GrayAnderson
(3) I doubt it would be WN to introduce it, but what about an airline offering a "guaranteed day only" ticket or something similar? You're guaranteed a seat on a flight on a given day (or within a given time range on a given day) when you book, but you're not told which flight you're assigned to until a certain time before (say, 72 hours out) and you're #1 for reaccomodation. Basically an advance-purchase variant on a standby ticket. In that scenario, you'd still have the $59 cheapo fare, but you wouldn't know if you were on the 0600 or 0900 flight.
One of the benefits of being Airtran Elite was that they guaranteed you a seat on any flight you wanted to fly, they would bump another passenger if necessary. I never had to use it, there was always a seat on the few last minute reservations I had to make. But it was a nice insurance policy and cost the airline very little.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 11:41 am
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Did that guarantee also apply to same day change? If so, that was a fantastic benefit.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 12:18 pm
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Originally Posted by lougord99
Did that guarantee also apply to same day change? If so, that was a fantastic benefit.
If I remember correctly everyone was allowed same day standby (even on later flights although that was a risk) or could pay $25 and get it changed at no increase of fare, assuming seats were availible. To get the guaranteed seat you generally had to pay the highest fare, but if you had to go it was still a good deal.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 1:17 pm
  #37  
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Originally Posted by sdsearch
Not every plane in Southwest's fleet has exactly the same number of seats, does it?
There are at least three configurations. And yes, this is clearly one way a WN flight could find itself "overcapacity": an equipment change.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 2:36 pm
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Originally Posted by pinniped
There are at least three configurations. And yes, this is clearly one way a WN flight could find itself "overcapacity": an equipment change.
By the end of they year there will be only two: 143 seats or 175 seats.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 2:49 pm
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Originally Posted by ucfjoe
Sweet. Maybe I'll get that empty middle seat more often.
A little off-topic ... but funny story!

I've been flying WN for about a decade now. 5 years ago, I received a very successful kidney transplant. Of course, my anti-rejection meds significantly suppress my immune system, making me much more susceptible to catching colds, flu, etc. So, when I fly, I wear an antibacterial face mask to protect myself from all the germs the rest of you are breathing on me!

It is humorous to watch how other passengers avoid the seat next to me when they see the mask. More often than not, if there are only two middle seats open one next to me (with my mask on), and one somewhere else they will look at both seats, look at me in my mask, and generally choose the other seat.
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Old Apr 28, 2017, 3:25 pm
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Originally Posted by rsteinmetz70112
If I remember correctly everyone was allowed same day standby (even on later flights although that was a risk) or could pay $25 and get it changed at no increase of fare, assuming seats were availible. To get the guaranteed seat you generally had to pay the highest fare, but if you had to go it was still a good deal.
edit: question was answered.
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Old Apr 29, 2017, 9:00 pm
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Originally Posted by ursine1
By the end of they year there will be only two: 143 seats or 175 seats.
This is basically the B6 situation: They don't overbook but if they have to hot-swap an A320 in for an A320, that's something like 50 pax to reaccommodate (and, in the defense of both airlines, a reasonable case for doing so). The only way an airline is going to succeed in getting that many volunteers is to get lucky.

And yes, I was thinking within an airline with my "Priceline style" (or probably more properly "Hotwire hotel style" offering.
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Old Apr 29, 2017, 10:44 pm
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Originally Posted by GrayAnderson
And yes, I was thinking within an airline with my "Priceline style" (or probably more properly "Hotwire hotel style" offering.

When Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier do this, then the legacy carriers will do it too (maybe WN but they tend not to follow the crowd). Legacy carriers are followers, not leaders.

That being said, because the ULCC (and forget Allegiant with their 2 or 3 flights a week) just don't have a lot of frequency on one city pair, so there's just no market to sell tickets over a 3 hour time span when there's only one flight in that time period. The market for tickets on some flight of the airline's choosing over an entire day is low $$$$. People value their time a little more than that. The ULCC have figured out how to sell tickets at absurdly low prices (i.e., prices that would result in quick failure if every seat sold for that price) -- seat inventory. The $59 tickets sell out first, then the $79 tickets, etc.

While it may seem that selling $25 tickets for a "some flight today" ticket allows the airline to put you on a lighter load flight instead of letting you pick a more heavily loaded flight, the problem is 1) most flights go out with every seat occupied anyway and 2) most of those people would have paid $59 anyway for a specific flight, so now you've lost $34 on every sale.

Selling a standby ticket is more valuable to the airline because they don't have to confirm you on any flight. You just have to sit at the airport potentially all day long, rather than being notified the day before of just when your chosen flight is going to depart. The same problem of selling the same people cheaper tickets applies. Selling standby tickets is fine if confirmed tickets all cost $750 instead of $59 to $700.
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Old Apr 30, 2017, 9:23 am
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Originally Posted by Kevin AA
When Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier do this, then the legacy carriers will do it too (maybe WN but they tend not to follow the crowd). Legacy carriers are followers, not leaders.

That being said, because the ULCC (and forget Allegiant with their 2 or 3 flights a week) just don't have a lot of frequency on one city pair, so there's just no market to sell tickets over a 3 hour time span when there's only one flight in that time period. The market for tickets on some flight of the airline's choosing over an entire day is low $$$$. People value their time a little more than that. The ULCC have figured out how to sell tickets at absurdly low prices (i.e., prices that would result in quick failure if every seat sold for that price) -- seat inventory. The $59 tickets sell out first, then the $79 tickets, etc.

While it may seem that selling $25 tickets for a "some flight today" ticket allows the airline to put you on a lighter load flight instead of letting you pick a more heavily loaded flight, the problem is 1) most flights go out with every seat occupied anyway and 2) most of those people would have paid $59 anyway for a specific flight, so now you've lost $34 on every sale.

Selling a standby ticket is more valuable to the airline because they don't have to confirm you on any flight. You just have to sit at the airport potentially all day long, rather than being notified the day before of just when your chosen flight is going to depart. The same problem of selling the same people cheaper tickets applies. Selling standby tickets is fine if confirmed tickets all cost $750 instead of $59 to $700.
True, but I think the position is (naturally) a bit more complicated: What if the fare is offered as a form of advance fare to undercut someone like Spirit? A "standby-esque" ticket on DL, UA, AA, or WN on many routes is going to actually be meaningful whereas with NK even a "confirmed" ticket has reputational issues.

(This comes to mind because, for example, out of PHF and ORF I can tell you which flights are going out with low load factors...and I'd dare say that the airline probably can as well. Also, if DL's pricing for its "Basic Economy" ticket is any indication, folks will do a surprising amount of stuff to save $5.)
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Old Apr 30, 2017, 12:46 pm
  #44  
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re no more overbooking... I was thinking about this:

With more open seats at the time of departure, this greatly increases the value of the free standby policy for A-listers. This means WN could get frequent fliers who are on the fence to switch from another airline because the probability of getting an empty seat is now much greater. While the % of seats filled won't go down that much, there is clearly a tremendous difference between a flight with 3 open seats and 4 on standby than there is with a flight that has 6 open seats and 4 on standby.

Not overbooking, the standby privilege, and the greater number of people who are able to use it means the late flights will have even more open seats. This is awesome for people who have mis-connected. I expect the number of people who get stuck overnight at a hub because they mis-connected and the one and only remaining flight tonight is full will drop like a rock. That increases the value of a WN ticket.

In other words, even if you never volunteer your seat, or never even hear an announcement for volunteers, the fact that you could miss your flight, or standby, and have a significantly greater chance of getting on board (say, 40% instead of 10% or whatever it is) will increase the value of a WN ticket, which means if the $59 tickets sell out sooner, more people will be willing to buy a $79 WN ticket instead of just jumping to another carrier for $79 where you can be almost assured of a full flight and almost no chance of getting home today in the event of an oversell or misconnection.
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Old Apr 30, 2017, 1:49 pm
  #45  
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Originally Posted by Toshbaf
I see the cancellation policy and full credit going away. At best, there will be a cancellation and full credit if you cancel within 72 hours.
+1 - Something has to give. Either WN substantially increases fares (which it can't do and remain competetive) or it radically alters the cancellation-change policy, at least in the few days before departure. That is in the cards because most WN passengers aren't sophisticated enough to understand what they have lost.

That is the cushion which overbooking allowed and which WN won't have anymore. The notion that WN can afford to leave empty seats lying around for IRROPS handling is not in the cards.

WN did not have to eliminate overbooking. It could have improved its predictive software, but it knows it has shaky IT architecture to begin with. It could also have upped its agent discretion for VDB, but it tends to be much more rules-oriented and it doesn't do that.

So, it has done something which looks customer-friendly. But, it won't be when the other shoe drops.
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