ratypus

My flight this Sunday night (back from Europe, end of half term week) is showing J0 C0 D0 R0 I0 Y0 B0 H0 K0 M0 L0 V0 N0 Q0 O0 S0 G0 on ExpertFlyer - not sure I've actually been on a flight this sold out before - seat map looks totally full/blocked as well.

I'm not worried about involuntary offload - Gold & Silver travelling in CE (with baby) so doesn't feel like we'd be first in line for that if it became necessary. Just curious is this very common? And does it really affect anything in practice - other than possibly BA looking for volunteers to offload as it seems pretty likely they must have over-booked??

EsherFlyer

I'd take it to mean that they know most / all of the travellers are leisure and unlikely to be no-shows / late changes. So by not overselling they save everyone a headache and faffing with compensation / costs for the sake of a few hundred pounds of marginal fare increase.

Brighterside

This is very common for European airports serving ski destinations - just watch how quickly flights sell for 2019 when they are released.

corporate-wage-slave

Yes it's fairly common and certainly doesn't surprise me around half term. It may well change over the next few days, it just needs one large family group to change their mind, or an equipment change and the picture could be quite different. There is a chance that they will be ringing up now looking for volunteers to go on alternative services, and some people may also be asked about this at the airport. Some airports such as BLQ get that quite regularly. If your outbound went smoothly, and there are no complications like expiring passports / visas etc, and you have confirmed seats, I would just OLCI at the first opportunity, and leave it at that.

A P Yu

Most flights are overbooked. They expect no shows and missed connections etc. In most cases these things sort themselves out before involuntary offloads are needed

mec72

I think not uncommon on peak travel dates, remember that you will always have some passengers who don't make it to the airport or whose connecting flight arrives late, people who have a late change in their travel plans, who don't have the required documents, or even if everyone shows up, there's another flight (not necessarily BA) that they can be moved to which gets to the final destination before EC 261 kicks in.

As an example, I was recently on a completely full flight where 7 people were offloaded because they didn't have the required travel documents - a father with two kids whose passport had less than 6 months left to expire, and a mother with three daughters travelling to South Africa who didn't have the required documentation for the kids (SA now has very strict requirements for children not accompanied by both parents).

fruitcage

Another offload example that I found interesting - flight from LHR to Gibraltar and several pax were offloaded (after having boarded) because they didn't have the right passports / docs for Spain. It seems that there was a significant risk of having to land in Malaga due to weather and that was enough to insist that everyone on board be ready to enter the Shengen area. As it happened, we landed in GIB just fine.

I'm sure they were just following the rules, but it seems borderline unreasonable to expect everyone on board to be correctly documented for what is after all just a backup plan.

ng1265

Interesting...would it be considered IDB in this case?

Nils21

Sounds quite unreasonable unless they are entitled by law to do so. When an emergency landing on an airport takes place the passenger are still not in that country. Isn't it true that you have only entered the country after passing immigration?

Imagine taking a flight to South Africa, you have all documents you need and then you would be offloaded because you don't have the right documents for Nigeria.
Probably because of some EU regulation the matter is different to Gibraltar, who knows.

Airprox

Yes but if a BA flight to GIB ends up in AGP, which is not uncommon, the pax are then bussed to GIB while the aircraft waits in AGP for the return pax to be bussed in the other direction. Therefore you would need to enter Spain.

KARFA

This isn't an emergency landing scenario though. Due to the difficulty of operating to GIB ending up diverting to the alternate AGP is not uncommon and therefore must be planned for as a matter of course.

Often1

No, that is an urban myth. You enter a country when you enter its airspace (in the case of an aircraft). For those with passports from nations with broad-based relationships with other nations, the prospect of being diverted is not particularly daunting. But, this can be an extremely unpleasant experience for some nationals in some nations.

As to sold out flights, those are common. BA spends a significant amount of money on predictive software to determine how much it can overbook an aircraft without creating an actual oversale. Presumably at the end of specific holidays from leisure destinations, the number of no shows is less and the willingness of people who must return to work to accept voluntary rerouting is limited.

Nils21

I totally forgot that GIB is no ordinary airport by all means. Makes sense now in that way.

corporate-wage-slave

There is a specific issue here in that the passengers likely to be in this position could be shipping crew with limited travel documentation allowing them to joining vessels in Gibraltar, and AGP is in the habit of simply refusing admission. At which point BA can only return them to London. Spain, like all ILO members, has to recognise the Seamen's Passbook, but it also asks for a letter of invitation from a Spanish maritime agency giving details of the Spanish port involved. Given the legal status of Gibraltar, the Guardia Civil at Málaga have a habit of being unhelpful. Philippine citizens are often affected by this.

mec72

I'd think a very clear EC 261 case.