Russ21Atl

From reading recent posts, it seems that (from others' stories) that DL is giving out millions in DL Dollars in bumping pax, and all of DL's flts are horribly oversold.

Please take into acct the big picture. When a situation happens to you personally, then yes, it is the biggest thing in the world at the time, and you are entitled to vent etc (I would too if it happened to me).

Anyway...if you look at the D.O.T. stats:
http://www.dot.gov/airconsumer/0203atcr.pdf

page 22 outlines the "Passenger Denied Boarding's" for 2000 and 2001.

For the two years, DL carried 190,417,240 passengers, and only 390,450 were voluntarily denied boarding, representing only a chance of 2 in a thousand that you'd get a chance to volunteer your seat; DL had 10,116 involuntary denied boarding's out of the same figure above, representing a only a chance of 53 in a million that you'd have to involuntarily give up your seat.

If you look at WN's numbers (Southwest): For the two years, WN carried 146,193,851 passengers, and 167,561 were voluntarily denied boarding, representing a chance of 1.14 in a thousand that you'd get a chance to volunteer your seat; WN had 24,796 involuntary denied boarding's out of the same figure above, representing a chance of 339 in a million that you'd have to involuntarily give up your seat.

If you look at CO's numbers: For the two years, CO carried 78,423,122 passengers, and 142,178 were voluntarily denied boarding, representing a chance of 1.8 in a thousand that you'd get a chance to volunteer your seat; CO had 13,025 involuntary denied boarding's out of the same figure above, representing a chance of 331 in a million that you'd have to involuntarily give up your seat.

So, compared to OALs, it looks like DL is doing an OK job.

Hopefully this will open up a nice debate (and I hope my math is correct)

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The information I provide is in no way the authoritative voice of Delta. I do not work for Corporate Communications, nor in Customer Care. I do not represent the final word for Delta when asked a question. I simply try to answer questions to the best of my knowledge, and try to direct people to the correct answer and/or point them in the right direction to find that answer. If you want to double check my answers, please E-Mail Delta Customer Care or just send an e-mail to: [email protected]

Thank you for letting me participate.

[This message has been edited by Russ21Atl (edited 03-19-2002).]

WestCoastDL

I LOVE DBCs (OK, although i'm not in love with them). These keep me in free travel almost constantly.

Folks flying the MCO-ATL-MCO or FLL-ATL-FLL know exactly what I'm talking about. Almost any day, any time. Actually, my wife and I got $900 EACH out of a MCO-ATL bump on New Year's Eve one year.

Spiff

I don't feel I get bumped enough.

If Delta's availability reads F0 A0 Y0 etc. then they ought to be handing out DBCs to people since they won't accept $1500-$3000 for a full fare ticket. Annoyingly, this often turns out not to be the case and there are actually empty seats on these F0 Y0 flights. See B747's posts about Inventory Management elsewhere for more examples.

keithguy

Actually, from what I've read, it seems like Delta is not overselling enough. I'd say what I read here agrees with DOT stats.

I think it's not the overbooking pratices that are bad, it's the pratice of afraid to overbook that's bad. I, personally, wouldn't mind DBC 95% of the time.

hfly

In all fairness, I was recently on a flight that was -33 the day before!! When we departed thre were 3 empty seats on the plane and there were no DBC's issued. Incidentally there were no misconnects to lower the number either.

akhullar

I hate DBC.Only place I'd love DBC is coming back from GIG Each day in GIG is heaven

mspman

From my experience lately between PHL and ATL, I have been intrigued with what DL is doing. Firstly, the 5pm flight from PHL-ATL is operated on a 727. What the heck is Delta thinking, putting such a small plane on such a busy route. That routinely sells out DAYS before (espically for a Thursday flight). I managed to take a bump on the Sunday afternoon flight this week, and I got on the 6:40am flight the next morning out of Atlanta. That plane was supposed to be a 727. But we got upgraded to a 757. And after the 13 standby passengers cleared, guess what? The plane was still full. Unbelievable.

It just seems to me that lately Delta doesn't realize that people are starting to fly again. The reduced schedule is making for some bad news in some markets. PHL/ATL is one. I'm flying FLL-ATL and back next weekend... I'll tell you how it goes. And for the first time ever as Medallion, I've been able to upgrade both legs of ATL-FLL without a waiting list.

paulr

Well, in fairness, it takes time to adjust their fleet schedule. Moving all those airplanes around is a big chess game (see B747's post for an example). As demand for some city pairs rises, DL has to shuffle aircraft around in other places to change gauge for those pairs.

Plus, there are some markets where demand is still fairly soft. ATL-SEA-ATL loads still seem fairly low, at least compared to, say, last summer. I expect them to pick up with the onset of the summer silly season, though.

the scribbler

ATL-PHL may be full, but there are plenty of routes that are not. I have been on near empty flights LGA-CVG, SFO-JFK, JFK-LAX, CVG-ORD. Even flights in/out of SLC during the olympics had plenty of empties. Also, remember thursday night is a popular night for those who leave monday AM. Try going somewhere in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, you most likely will not see the same traffic. That said, why they give you a 727 when I've sat on empty 763 (domestics) I can't even begin to explain.

But at least you get the modern interiors that DL's 727s are known for. Nothing like fine woodwork!

theDeltaFlyer

I've twice been on an evening dearture from BWI-ATL, a 757, that was virtually empty.

On one in January I counted 14 people in the boarding area. The GA called for "all sections, all rows" and was done in 2 minutes. They should have just put everyone up front ... would have been a cheap way to impress the 10 coach passenegers (not that DL cares enough to do it).

My point is THAT a/c should be swapped for the 727 running out of PHL. Since both start in ATL and return to ATL how hard is it to make that sort of adjustment?

How hard are minor adjustments to do between 'schedule updates'?

[This message has been edited by theDeltaFlyer (edited 03-20-2002).]

theDeltaFlyer

arghhh.

[This message has been edited by theDeltaFlyer (edited 03-20-2002).]

theDeltaFlyer

I wish we could delete our own posts ...
or did I miss something and we actually can?



[This message has been edited by theDeltaFlyer (edited 03-20-2002).]

andymo99

Folks, there is an important piece of logic to remember in analyzing how it SEEMS that so many flights are full. By definition, there are going to be many more witnesses to a full (or overold) flight than to an empty one.

Let's say there are 100 flights in a fictitious sample, with each plane having a capacity of 200 pax. Let's imagine that one flight is oversold, with 220 pax at the gate, and so they need 20 volunteers. The other 99 flights are miserably empty, with just 1 person on each. What happens now? 220 people conclude that the airline is doing a booming business, while only 99 people know the truth, that the situation is pretty gloomy.

I use extreme numbers just to illustrate the point that, by definition, more people are going to be exposed to the packed flights, while fewer know about the empties!

R-

Unfortunately, I DBC never seems to happen here in GIG. It only happens when I am trying to come home.

MarkinDallas

andymo99:
An excellent observation. Very clever. I would not have thought that one through by myself and my job includes statistics.
Mark, Dallas