ContinentalFan

That's good. I watch that statistic, since it seems to be a harbinger of good news at the end of each quarter. Continental has managed to be number one quite a few times with bumped passengers. It doesn't seem to be hurting the carrier at all.

channa

How can an IDB not hurt the carrier? You have an annoyed customer, and an expensive liability on your hands. That's never a good thing.

VDBs isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it shows full planes and a satisfied customer. An IDB is a customer satisfaction nightmare, because most customers don't even know that such a thing is a possibility.

ryerflyer

Huh? What do you mean "without bumping anyone"? JetBlue certainly does bump passengers!!

Wildman

recently on a oversold ANC return flight....offered my two first class seats up...GA offered me a wopping $100 travel credit and coach on the next flight....Thanks, but no thanks!...I said you must be kidding right? Nope that's the offer. (I said $300 TVC and first on any flight, any date....I be sitting in my seat drinking my preflight drink.)

Never heard from the GA.

IMOH, I think the basic offer should start at $300 TVC.

whiteknuckles

On June 4, IAH-LAX one gate agent made an announcement that they would give a $400 voucher to anyone who would give up their seat. I was standing right by the desk and immediately volunteered. I signed some form and then he asked me to take a seat in the waiting area and they would let me know 5-10 minutes before departure if they still needed my seat. After everyone boarded, I was getting a little curious, so I walked up to the desk and asked what was going on. The gate agent said, "We won't be needing your seat after all, here's a coupon for a free drink and your boarding pass". So I board the plane and of course all the overhead bins were now full , but fortunately one of the FAs agreed to take my roll-on into BF. Once seated, here comes the other gate agent who tells me that he now needs my seat. So up I go again, following this GA off the plane. He says "Sorry for the inconvenience" and I say "No problem as long as I get my $400 voucher. He says "Oh no, we don't give those to people on standby". I told him I was a confirmed passenger not a standby passenger and he seemed shocked, and told me to take my seat again. It was quite a fiasco.

ContinentalFan

Actually, JetBlue has a policy of not overselling flights, so bumping passengers is a lot less frequent. Of course, it does happen, but it's not intentional on the part of the carrier.

IAH_FLYER

How does it happen if the never oversell?

BTW - only 67 posts so far today, ContinentalFan...you've got some work to do!

channa

Weight/balance?

IAH_FLYER

Maybe, but there were plenty of tech stops on westbound transcons earlier this year.

JBLUA320

They probably offer VDBs during irregular operations, where they want to accomodate stranded pax. It's not a result of overbooking, but it's still a bump.

TWA Fan 1

As stated before, jetBlue has a policy of not overbooking so their "Denied Boardings" rate for the latest period available (April-June 2006) is 0.13 per thousand passengers enplaned.

That compares to Continental which has a denied boarding rate of 1.80/1,000 pax enplaned, the highest rate of any legacy airline (although AS has a higher rate of 1.95/1,000 pax enplaned).

You can view all the data in its gorey detail at http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/repor...t/0608atcr.pdf (the denied boarding data is available on page 34 of this document)

In all fairness to CO, these rates are still pretty low and your chances of IDB are very low indeed.

TWA Fan 1

This happened almost exclusively on one day, February 17, a day when headwinds registered up to 180 mph.

entropy

Yup.
I was flying SFO-CLE the friday before july 4, they were oversold on every flight, there were several going out at the same time, and I was told that they were under strict orders not to go over 300. I did take it, and I ended up on the flight anyways...(someone no-showed) But they did IDB someone on another flight.

ContinentalFan

Flights canceled, delayed, etc. That causes passengers to build up creating an oversold situation. Frankly, I think that JBLU has to change this policy. I think, given its fare structure, the load factor could be higher.

channa

I looked more carefully at this data and used it to run some of my own numbers.

The first thing I found interesting is when you add up the total number of denied boardings by carrier. This is the percent of people denied boarding (regardless of VDB or IDB status). Just the % they needed to bump:

Carrier: DB% percent
UA: 0.1379%
AA: 0.1046%
WN: 0.1249%
NW: 0.1670%
US: 0.1624%
DL: 0.1283%
CO: 0.1197%
AS: 0.1585%

This statistic I found very interesting, because it shows that CO doesn't bump as many people as other carriers on a percentage basis. In fact, only AA bumps a smaller percentage of people than CO. If that's the case, how come CO has such a high IDB rate? It doesn't make sense that they're IDBing so many people, when they're really not bumping that many people in the first place, right?

The next thing I calculated was the total numbers of DBs needed, and the percentage of those that the airline was able to get as VDBs vs. IDB. Note, this is not your VDB or IDB chance, rather this is the percent of total denied boardings that were either VDB or IDB. In other words, of all the bumps the airline had to do, what percent were voluntary, and what percent were involuntary. The total of the two should add up to 100%.

Airline: %VDB, %IDB
UA: 95%, 5%
AA: 92%, 8%
WN: 92%, 8%
NW: 92%, 8%
US: 90%, 10%
DL: 87%, 13%
CO: 85%, 15%
AS: 88%, 12%

Someone mentioned that AS has a higher IDB rate that CO, which is true. But of all the bumps that AS had to deal with, AS was more successful at encouraging pax to volunteer than CO was, on a percentage basis. In fact, they were even more successful at getting pax to volunteer than was DL, who was two notches below them.

So it seems that when it needs to bump people, CO has the most difficulty getting its passengers to agree to volunteer.

When we take the fact that CO has a very high IDB rate, combine that info with the fact that CO has a very low overall bump rate, that pretty much proves what most on this thread have been saying from anecdotal evidence: that CO is stingy with VDB compensation, and would rather IDB people than up the ante to encourage them to volunteer.