tom_MN

I stopped reading at page 12 but it seems that the mistakes the family made were
1. tell the gate agent what they were doing
2. not masquerade the 1 yo old as being the 18 yo, present and have scanned that boarding pass
3. Have the infant in arms notation removed from the mother's boarding pass (Oh Johnny? We left him behind at the hotel, he wasn't feeling well so he's not on this flight).

CashN

I don't see the common sense in that. Tickets are much more costly the closer you get to departure date. The whole booking class system makes sense because it's cheaper to book way in advance aiding the airlines in containerization. They need the planes to be 95%+ capacity to make a profit given current low pricing.

Why on earth would they allow people to buy all their tickets way in advance and sell them on the black market later on to make a profit? Seat scalping is all we need to fix the industry. /sarcasm

ijgordon

Ya think?

nutwpinut

It would not be Armageddon.

If all the seats get sold out so early in advanced, the airline would add another flight, undercut the scalpers, and make a huge profit. This is not like the Superbowl where 1 individual/corporation can buy 100 tickets. A person can only have 1 air ticket per flight.

buckeyefanflyer

The bottom line is the way they were treated was awful. Not a way to treat your customers. The FA should be canned for threatening them.

gooselee

This isn't double dipping. People need to stop calling it that. It's selling a certain quantity of a commodity and then using different ways to deliver what was sold.

An airline makes available for sale 180 tickets for travel between A and B. They start doing this almost a year in advance. Perhaps, at that time, they have assigned an aircraft to that route that holds 150 pax. Several things can then happen:
1. They sell less than 150 tickets, clear some standbys, and fly the plane.
2. They sell 160 tickets, 10 people don't show up, fly the plane.
3. They sell 160 tickets, 8 people don't show up, they compensate 2 people, fly the plane.
4. They sell 180 tickets, swap out to a plane that can hold 170 pax, 10 people don't show up, fly the plane.
5. Etc. etc.

Some folks on here act like they own all parts, pieces, rights, and privileges to a specific seat just because they purchased a ticket for transit. You do not. The seat is not yours to do with as you wish. The only obligation the airline has is to safely get you from A to B. If they can't provide that service, you can ask them for a refund plus the DOT-mandated compensation if applicable. If they can provide the service, but you choose not to use it, then for a nonrefundable ticket the airline held up their end of the bargain and owes you nothing. If I pay for a month of cell phone service but then just decide I don't want to use my phone that month, it's not like Verizon gives me back my money. They just use the infrastructure I didn't consume for someone else.

This is false. While yes, airlines are businesses and seek to gain profit, they're also smart enough to know they can't actually charge whatever they want and still expect a critical mass of customers.

Allowing airlines to sell more tickets than they have seats on a plane, and to utilize empty seats as needed, has a downward pressure on pricing overall, which *benefits* the individual customer 99.9% (literally, based on denied boarding metrics) of the time.

Said another way - an airline seeks to collect revenue of $50k on a short domestic flight, to cover fuel, wages, maintenance, capital expense, overhead, and a bit of profit. They are going to collect that $50k one way or another - would you, as an individual consumer, rather that the $50k is split over a max of 150 people/tickets, if overbooking and reuse of no-show seats is disallowed? Or would you rather that the $50k is split over perhaps 160 or 170 different people/tickets, once accounting for no shows, cancelled nonrefundable tickets, overbookings that clear standby, etc.? The math here only works out one way.

Again, no indication that the standbys who cleared were overbooked revenue passengers. And while the DL employees' actions were bad, it's laughable to think that this single incident, where the passengers share a fair amount of the blame, will "insure" that the entire airline industry changes their long-standing booking, ticketing, and revenue management practices.

The fact that people in this FT thread are calling for changes to overbooking practices which have nothing to do with this incident is pretty solid evidence that the media spin has cannibalized the actually relevant things that might need improvement, and now that the family has gotten their $, this story will fade away just like the rest of them.

gooselee

Correct.

But...it would seem that you're agreeing with people who think that the dad in this story actually "owned" four or five tickets on the flight in question.

So...which is it?

Also, airlines can't just add flights on a whim. There are only so many gates, slots, etc. available...especially for certain routes and times (generally, the most popular ones).

SJC ORD LDR

That would be a great business opportunity. We could call it VacationHub, it would be the StubHub of airline tickets.

Gynob001

I enroll in a University and pay the tuition to get a diploma/degree. Why can't I use a substitute who would take he tests/exams for me? In what ways getting me a diploma is different from getting me from point A to B?
Why can't I use someone else to go to work instead of me?
Some of the passenger/FA/Airline problems are becoming legal issues. It looks like common sense,ethical and compassion issues always win because businesses are afraid of bad publicity. On the other hand, some of the rules and policies are so stupid and illogical.

rickg523

Fine. Apply all rules like a mindless zombie. I know - corporations are people too, my friend. And it works out so well for corporations when they act like the worst person ever - the officious little bureaucrat with more power than brains or backbone.
So enjoy lording it over the peons while you can, enjoy interpreting the rules to your benefit at the expense of your paying customers. Ignore the obvious public outrage that has already impacted your government overlords. Just don't expect a whole lot of sympathy when they change the rules and enforce them on your business like mindless zombies.

miraclebear2003

It has been quite interesting to read this entire thread and also comments posted elsewhere. Also, have seen the media coverage of the event.

Obviously there is going to be a lot of disagreement, but even though we don't have all the facts, that doesn't stop people from telling us exactly what happened and what should have happened.

I don't want to repeat a lot of what has been said, but let me add another thought. Flying is not a right and it's not a privilege. It's a contract between you and an airline. Yes, they get to make the rules even if it's in their favor. Do you realize some of the minute details of contracts that you agree to when you sign your name. Are credit card agreements, loan agreements or hospital admissions necessarily favorable to you? No way. Fortunately, it's very possible that none of those things may ever effect you, just as the airline rules may not effect you (negatively).

I don't think there is any disagreement that the FA acted inappropriately. If I was sitting nearby I would have thought that I was hearing wrong. I don't think DL is trying to say that was appropriate and given recent events a payoff makes sense.

OK, on to the next story.

Ny76

Not true - some people by two seats for themselves.

nutwpinut

The way airline pricing works 90% of the cost is paid for by 10% of the customers. The general public is only trying to pay that last 10%.

Most flights never get oversold. 90% of my flights were at ~75-90%. Those that were full, were caused by customers from cancelled flights because of bad weather, not oversold.


Benefits the individual customer 99.9% of the time. That is a non-sequitur. Using your logic, I could say by not overselling, you benefit the customer 99.9999% of the time because then you would have even less IDB and even more people get to where they want and that is also a benefit.

nutwpinut

LOL.... I was wondering who would say this first. I thought to myself should I even bother addressing it. It's easy enough to make a rule that if you buy 2 for 1 then you can't split it. That seems reasonable to me a rule and not complicated.

JayTeaBee

It all comes down to one simple thing (in my simple mind) to determine who is at the majority of fault here:

How many boarding passes were scanned? My supposition is that it was only 3 and as others have speculated when 18 yo Mason was a no show his seat went to a standby pax. If, for some reason, they did scan 4 BP's with some sort of agreement of the GA, this situation should have never come up.