This won't be good for PR. From
CBC, Sunday February 10, 2019
Air Canada employee says staff trained to 'dupe' passengers at risk of being bumped from oversold flights
The airline says overselling is carefully managed, and employees are trained to be transparent with customers
A pair of Air Canada insiders are shedding light on the airline's policy of overselling flights, revealing what they say is a widespread practice of duping passengers into believing they have a seat on a plane and stringing them along until the last possible moment.
As a way to try to maximize revenues, airlines are allowed to sell more plane tickets for a flight than there are available seats, but the former and current ticket agents who spoke with Go Public say Air Canada is less than transparent with customers who are likely to be denied boarding because a flight has been oversold.
"It's never fun to have to lie to people," said the former customer sales and service agent, who worked at Air Canada's check-in counter at Vancouver International Airport for several months before quitting just over a year ago.
"I had to tell people over and over again that they were gonna get on the plane, when I knew that they might not."
The other insider, a longtime Air Canada ticket agent who still works for the airline and trains employees, says he is now one of the people teaching new agents to not be forthcoming.
"I say to the new hired agents, 'You can't put up with confrontation all day long. If someone has 'GTE' [for "gate"] on their boarding pass, it means they don't have a seat. But if you explain that to them, they'll get upset. So just send them to the gate,'" he told Go Public.
"I train people to dupe passengers."
The day he spoke with Go Public, he said he'd pointed dozens of Air Canada customers to a gate knowing they didn't have a seat.
CBC has agreed not to identify the current and former Air Canada employees because doing so could jeopardize their current employment.
Air Canada says the practice of overselling is carefully managed, and employees are trained to be transparent with customers.
'Every route could be oversold'
The former Air Canada agent said he contacted Go Public because he wanted travellers to know how often staff are forced to scramble to find seats for passengers stuck on oversold flights.
"I was shocked," he said. "I had no idea that Air Canada was doing this at this scale."
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