Originally Posted by
wpr8e
1) How does one determine if a flight is overbooked? This is not easily available to the public.
2) How do you know the circumstances of an overbooking? Previous cancellations, other airline cancels, downgrade of aircraft, day of week changes, weather etc.
3) Why do we care if a flight is overbooked and everyone is accommodate or took the compensation?
4) Isn't this what Revenue Management is for?
Basically this kind of tally will be meaningless to determine anything other than specific anecdotes of one flight on one particular day. I'm not sure it provides any other value.
Good questions....
--We don't truly know except from VDB's being offered (that's our metric, which i'll clarify above).
--There are a variety of circumstances that lead to overbooking - weather, day of week, holiday season, etc... but mostly from expected no-shows from business travelers and connections. All these factors factor together for certain route be more predisposed (LAX-BOS) than others (BOS-IAD).
--Although there are many factors at play (just like your chances of getting an upgrade), over time we can discern trends. And just like UDUStats help understand upgrade possibilities, the purpose of this is also better understand VDB possibilities.
--The most likely purpose of this is to better game the chance of earning of VDB vouchers when selecting itineraries to book.
--Of course UA revenue management KNOWS EVERYTHING, but they religiously wont share any overbooking information. This is the WHOLE purpose - to elucidate trends that RM wont share with us.
Originally Posted by
uapremier
I think this is a great idea. Thanks. But I think there needs to be a slight clarification. Many flights are overbooked, but that doesn't necessary result in VDBs. For instance, my flight yesterday SFO-BOS was overbooked by 4, but with no shows, no VDBs were taken even though it was overbooked.
Are we tracking flights that do get VDB'd or just overbooked? (i.e. Would I hypothetically log my flight from yesterday or not?)
We dont always know background overbookings that dont yield VDBs (those are often discovered by chance by a helpful agent). but what this seeks to track is whether VDB/IDB was offered. It's the most readily transparent proxy for overbooking. And its VDB/IBD that we're most interested anyway.