Stranger

If airlines were to offer two prices, one with guarantee of no IDB, and one based upon current IDB/VDB practices, guess what 99% of these complainers would pick?

Have your lunch and eat it too.

(Actually it is more or less like that already. Paying for seat selection virtually eliminates the risk of IDB on lowest rates. Admittedly this could be advertised more clearly.)

sulfur

My experience as well. Can't speak for other routes. I think the only time AC bumped folks on my flights was when they had to switch to a smaller aircraft.

seadog83

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the cost would maybe 25 cents per seat. Well below the noise of the cost.

And not sure what the confusion is. The airlines have a vested interest in not making it obvious crappy terms of what people are buying. If they broadcast it front and center, it would make a less desirable product. Might get people questioning why they're even selling such garbage.

I suppose it begs the question then, at what point does it become unreasonable? I say you can communicate all the important terms on a single page, other's say having it buried inside 111 pages is fine. What about having to complete an expedition to Tibet, killing a giant spider to get a key, then going to the Congo, killing a giant snake, using said key to open a lock box, and deciphering 2000 pages of ciphered text? I mean it was all right there.

Stranger

About 25 cents, depends how you calculate. If you dilute only on lowest fares with no seat assigned, might be $2 to 5. Regardless, booking engines searching for the lowest fare would relegate to the second page.

As to not making terms obviously crappy, not so sure either. If something does not seem crappy, people start thinking they must have overpaid.

seadog83

I see your point, however I think it should be spread across all seats, because even if I have an assigned seat, was in no rush and only flying at whatever time because of price, I would happily delay 12 hours or over night with hotel provided if it meant flying free, let a lone 4x my fare, or $10k. I find it hard to believe, even at $800 for a $200 fare on the united flight no one wanted to take it. Is everyone's time really so valuable?

Secondly, if it's the case that 90+% of people already have seat assignments or fare classes that don't make them eligible for IDB, then the rate of IDB isn't 5-10/100k as advertised. It may be an order of magnitude higher.

Why stop at overselling 105% or whatever. Clearly they've determined an "acceptable" rate of IDB. Why not just up it since quality of service and likelihood of actually boarding isn't an issue? $10 seats to Asia. That would make fares even cheaper. Never mind the likelyhood of actually getting there in the next two years is <10%. But before you die probably. Or is that unreasonable?

My point with these exaggerations, is that you need to draw a line somewhere. Air Canada constantly errs on the side of "legally acceptable, what a reasonable legal team would do when negotiating a corporate buyout, but beyond what a reasonable person would do". Except for the spastic beancounters here, I think most people would favour a push to "what a reasonable person would do"

canopus27

I think a VDB-only model is conceptually a good thing. Implementing a bidding model for it would be hard though, because I suspect that most people would have a price that varies by the number of hours of delay.

Even if we assume that AC could implement a VDB bidding model (perhaps in the mobile app, or maybe as an extension to the OLCI?) ... what would they ask?

"How many dollars would you accept if we moved you to a later flight?"
"How many hours would you be prepared to be delayed by, in return for $800?"

Now that I'm thinking about it, it would be tricky to implement in a way that was easily understandable by most people.

jc94

Likewise ignoring the concept of AC IT ... other airline(s) have been known to do this. We're not asking for anything other companies can't provide; though we're getting close to descending into another conversation about AC IT here.

I do wonder how many of people (and I'm still not blaming the woman here, I'm just saying in general ... ) read all the OLCI stuff. Another two people denied checkin due to no eTA. I haven't checked in online that recently but on the mobile app it's pretty hard to ignore a red message taking up 1/3 of my screen.

canopus27

I'm curious how other airlines do it, do you know?

If I were to say "I'll accept $500 to be delayed" ... how long can they delay me for? Is there a fixed window?

jc94

So I posted most of this before - though can't recall where so I'll re-post and request forgiveness.

It was AA or Delta (I think Delta) and I was at a kiosk and it asked me if I would be willing to take a later flight and for how much, gave me three options. They were low, like $100/$150/$250 (these values could differ from my previous post, it was a couple of years ago and I've not flown DL since for other reasons). I can't recall the exact wording, but I chose the middle one, low as it seemed, and never heard anything, got on board to my destination.

Now that I mention it, I think AA asked me once too. But again this wasn't recent, and I barely fly anything other then AC, UA and non-NA regional airlines these days.

And it's not at OLCI but recently UA was showing a note at the gate TV saying they need 10 volunteers and each will get $150. As people volunteered it was updated to say they now need 4/2 etc...

Then again on UA, my friend was asked at checkin if he'd take a later flight. No more details, except for the fact that UA was clearly clueless about the fact that he had a 1h connection for another UA flight, leading to a 3rd intl. segment. So he was an "odd" person to ask.

RangerNS

They only need to ask the question "Are you willing to talk about a later flight?" when you do your CI, up to T-24.

When it comes down to crunch time, the GA can look at the pool of PAX willing to do something. It might be easy to then quickly identify to the airline who is the best PAX to talk to personally.

From that, if necessary, the GA can figure out which PAX can be accommodated easily, and even come up with an offer tuned to them. Consider that there well could be a superior routing for some given PAX who booked the multi-leg, long layover route because it was cheaper.

And if it does get into a VDB bidding war, the GA can bring in the limited set of PAX who want to play and not negotiate with the horde of disinterested lounge occupants.

MSPeconomist

In the Dr. Dao case, UA offered VOUCHERS not money for their VDB attempts. UA reportedly assumes a breakage rate for their vouchers of 75% (but I've seem claims that experience at other airlines can be as high as 90-95%), so UA$800 = US$200. Speculation is a that the fare Dr Dao paid for the ORD-SDF segment, for DOT mandatory IDB calculations, was probably in the $50-100 range (although we don't know what he paid for his ticket, which was apparently some discounted coach RT to LAX), so at 400%, he would have received less than $400 for an overnight delay of about 22 hours.

It is NOT true that UA offered $800 in real money, only UA vouchers.

canadiancow

That suggestion is because bad weather in Toronto could have delayed her just as long as the IDB.

I think it's reasonable to expect you won't be IDBd, but I don't think it's reasonable to bet your once in a lifetime vacation on your flight arriving within a 6 hour window.

DrunkCargo

Exactly. If the analogy is short selling inventory, then like once, every few years, you should expect a nearly unlimited loss (VDB price goes to millions)... but in practice, I totally see this as unlikely.

Hence, there should be no airline pushback to eliminating IDB and falling entirely to a governed VDB process.

That's my point. The edge case (we could be bankrupted by greedy pax) is what the industry argues, not me. It's impossible to get hundreds of pax to agree collectively NOT to accept an ever-increasing VDB $... some greedy punt will grab it and stick his/her tongue out at the other competitors (pax).

In this woman's case, it's pretty clear it was some infrastructure screwup, either GTE or coupon required or whatever techy stuff goes on inside AC... Gate was like... "Meh", too much trouble to call whoever fixes this crap, or to actually do a VDB (including making offer to pax already onboard), or maybe already boarded Zone 4 or whatever "NEED TO GET THIS BIRD PUSHED BACK ASAP!" in the back of their mind... AC claims they're looking in to it, kinda like how they looked into my situation. Let's see how defensive the results will be, assuming they're made public. (Given the $800 was already paid out, it seems front-line attitudes are changing)

Right. In this case, there are humans that can be held to task and we have peaceful approaches to settling these grievances.

Holding god to task for its acts is generally hard to do. This was a risk she (or her tour company) was willing to take; and it looks like the tour company is going to make her whole. I would argue being subject to acts of god is a risk we all take merely sustaining life in general.

"One in a lifetime" I suspect is CBC wording, not hers.

This is why US (PreAA) and DL in my experience announce the new flight you would be confirmed on, promise a "confirmed seat" (typically with some bump in CoS), and then start the price bidding... I've taken AC's offer for VDB with same clear announcements. They allowed me to VDB off the replacement flight too. Stupidly, I let that U$1300 in combined vouchers expire. (I'm bad with coupons and crap)

tcook052

That doesn't appear to be the case based on the quotation marks in the linked article:

"I was so upset, I thought I was going to cry," Russell said from her home in Toronto. "Air Canada caused me to miss the trip of a lifetime."

skybluesea

Seadog83 is completely wrong, no traveller is immune from IDB, including SEMM, as previously posted. With recent first-hand experience on this subject, I choose not to whine for the simple reason is I agreed to the Tariff and stand by my obligations.

and for rest who believe IDB must disappear, well, the consequence will be a rush of high-paying travellers who need full flexibility away from AirCanada. And when that starts to happen, guess who really pays the price, all those travellers at the bottom who's fares will be forced way up.

Watch out for what you wish for, and pretending VDB will protect you from the real world , no evidence that it will, otherwise only VDB would've already been implemented long ago.

It's like believing your smarter than the market, but only a fool believes that.