Originally Posted by
channa
Yup...and years ago UA (CO back then) got in trouble with German authorities for flying 757s from a few airports in Europe due to the frequency of the refueling stops. it became a consumer matter because they advertised nonstops and weren't able to deliver a nonstop flight.
AS used to compensate in these situations. And no reason they can't bump people either. If they go high enough in the comp, people will bump, and it will be voluntary.
My understand in the CO case was this, and it's quite different from AS (who 99+% of the time file flight plans straight to Hawaii)
For most airlines there's a fuel calculation that looks something like this
fuel to carry = (fuel to destination + fuel to alternate + 30 mins) + 10%
What CO were doing was instead of filing EDDT-KEWR (TXL-EWR) non-stop, they would always file EDDT-CYQX (TXL-YQX/Gander); which is almost exactly along the route.
When approaching CYQX they would re-do the math from their current location, and that 10% buffer to destination is now 1/2 what it would have been had they filed KEWR in the 1st place. If they now show that they have enough fuel, they'd re-file the flight plan mid-air with a new destination of KEWR. If they still didn't have enough, they'd simply land at CYQX (original destination) and top up.
Passengers were able to show that on a regular basis they had no intention of ever planning to go KEWR direct, and had a complaint on the basis that the flight was advertised as non-stop. I think they got somewhere but it was paid out long before it hit the courts.
The AS to Hawaii is quite different, because
a) they're not re-routing mid-air
b) the percentage of flights diverting is pretty small