jeffrocowboy

Hi all,

in this report a claim is made that AirNZ is 'kicking people' off oversold domestic flights.

Is this really a thing? I have never experienced that before. Is there a chance to score some nice compensation as in US :-)

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/...ar-1000-return

nzkarit

I haven't seen or heard of this outside this article.

I know they are full, and Flexi isn't that helpful at the moment as isn't empty seats to move to.

Though on Sunday the CHC longue person was nice and put me on a standby list (had Flexi but every flight full) and got on a earlier flight when some people no showed for check-in. Was a group of three so I had 2abc all to my self, while rest of plane was full.

cavemanzk

I have one a few Fridays ago in the Wellington lounge, when they made a page for people wanting to change to a earlier flight to AKL.

Some of the flights were slightly delayed, but not major delays. It seemed likely they proactively freeing up seats on the later flights.

sbiddle

First I've ever heard of overselling beings an issue on domestic. I suspect it's not true.

I've heard there are a huge number of people being caught out with flexi tickets at present. Flight loadings really are beyond crazy.

jeffrocowboy

Yes I've had a couple of Flexi tickets - which turned out to be very inflexible

Thai-Kiwi

I have been favouring FlexiRefund over FlexiChange for quite some some time. For $20 more it seems a no-brainer to me, especially if purchased well in advance.
Then at least you can walk away with a refund if the travel is somewhat discretionary.

MaestroNZ

A recent data point that I thought was very unusual at the time:


Last weekend I was travelling out of Wellington to a regional airport on a Flexi ticket. I changed my flight during the day to an earlier flight that went via Auckland instead of direct but still got me in 3 hours earlier than the direct flight.
Then the flight WLG-AKL got delayed by 30 minutes which meant I wouldn’t make my connecting flight.
I went to the lounge attendant to tell her my situation. She said “I’ll see what I can do.“
She came to see me about 5 minutes later and said she had put me on the earlier direct flight. I said to her, “Oh, I couldn’t change to that flight on my App, I thought it was full?”.

She said something along the lines of “it is, we have just over-sold it for you, we have been doing that a lot recently. We will just hope that we get a no-show, but you are confirmed on the flight.”

Come boarding time, all went well and I had the one spare seat on the plane next to me until the very last moment (after they had pulled the ramp away) when a young guy came running in very stressed and flustered to sit next to me. He said to me that he got to check in and they told him they had over sold the flight and he would have to wait until the last minute to see if he would get a seat. They had reserved a seat for him in the last flight of the day however. They said they would also provide him with food vouchers.

The poor guy was very stressed that he wasn’t going to make it home, and I felt way too guilty to tell him that I was the cause of his stress! Luckily for both of us it ended well for all.
I do wonder if they only did it as there was a seat to move him onto later in the day?

Thai-Kiwi

I wonder if their decision was based on your status, or fare class, or both. Lounge staff are usually very diligent in following ‘checklists’, so it seems there will have been an APB to oversell.

nzkarit

And the above was for service recovery to cover a connection which no longer worked. Which is a bit different to actively selling over sold flights

Thai-Kiwi

Accepted. However it was MaestroNZ ’s reported comment by the Lounge staff which suggested to me that, at face value, over-selling is available for use as a tool in this current period of very high loads

MaestroNZ

I did wonder if it was done for me as I have Elite status with NZ. And I guess it’s arguable it wasn’t “sold” to me as I couldn’t do it myself, so was only likely to have happened because of delays in the network. At first I thought it was great service for an Elite member, but then after sitting next to the guy that it impacted most I was feeling pretty guilty! Im
glad it worked out for both of us.
I asked the guy who almost got bumped if he had checked in early and he said no as he had lost his phone so he hadn’t checked in until he got to the airport. I suspect he was the last person to check in perhaps? He also said that he had only booked the flight 2 days earlier and it was a very very expensive ticket. Mine while a flexi ticket was booked weeks in advance and not overly expensive.

sbiddle

Interestingly I flew to ROT a couple of weeks ago and there were zero seats available for booking around 72 hrs out. Even on the morning there were no seats being sold but were still 3 seats showing free on the seat map - and after boarding those 3 seats remained empty.

Thai-Kiwi

Perhaps a fully sold flight with 3 'no shows' and nil other pax waiting when the flight closed? If they were FlexiRefunds then those 3 would be refunded ...?

ukflyer1

Dunedin - Auckland seemed to be oversold end of last week and at airport checkin they were asking for volunteers to move to later flights in return for "compensation". I wasn't on that route so didn't get all the detail.