My wife and I are flying AUS-LAS r/t next weekend, and I have been using itn to look at loads. Out of AUS, it looks great, nice empty? flight (i.e. 9-9-9-9-9-9-9) but on the return (on NWA metal through MEM) it had looked like the return was overbooked (i.e. 9-9-3-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0)but lately it has increased capacity...7-5-2-0-0-0-0-0. We would really be interested in getting 'bumped', and I wa shoping this flight would be overbooked (an extra night in LAS) so I have 2 questions.

1) What is the likelihood this flight is overbooked
2) Do the airlines add capacity to a flight in an attempt to overbook...and if they overbook by a certain amount do they change the aircraft type..i.e. upgrading from an A320?

Any help would be appreciated...by the way, the numbers are not symbolic in #, just a representation of COACH class designators...Y etc...we are at the lowest (cheap ticket).

Also, I guess I have three questions. We are ticketed by CO (working towards CO silver) does that increase/decrease the chances of a bump?

Thanks, Mike

As I am sure you know, airlines have complex ways of determining what fare classes get left open on what days, from what cities, during what times based again on a ton of factors not the least of which is historic records of that flight. So with that said-they still mess up and oversell flights, the only problem is you can't predict it.

So to answer your Q's:
1) Don't know. Las Vegas is the one thorn in airlines sides for bumping because it plays by different rules than most other cities. LAS has a wierd traffic pattern with conventions and the bad part is that a lot of the convention traffic are trade show attendees-passengers who book travel on their own dime looking for a low fare but who can, and often do, stay over extra nights causing the airlines to anticipate a higher "no-show" rate for low-fare passengers. This works against them when they only have vacationing low-fare passengers who all show up on that flight and suddenly they are bumping double-digit figures of people.

Sundays also are tough to gauge, because although it is the busiest day to leave LAS, as most weekend vacationers are heading home, airlines don't have as many seats open for sale as the date approaches so you get that 9-7-1-0-0-0-0-0 in itn. This doesn't guarantee the flight is oversold but that it won't take any more discount flyers-LAS is notorious for them.

2) Sometimes, but not often. Certain airlines can substitue A3XX aircraft, while others can switch 757/767's or swap different versions or configurations of 737 with ease, but understand that this is less likely to occur then a simple passenger "bump" as it can screw up flights down the line and isn't the easiest thing from the logistics side.

ALSO) I am not sure how NW does their bumps. As a United guy I do know that if a Premier member is put on a volunteer list they go to the top regardless of when they are put on. If NW does the same for NW/CO/DL elites I don't know, but it isn't all that often that elites dash out to be delayed for a travel credit or a free flight (except us FT'ers) so being on the list early is the best advice I can give.

If you do a search on the NW forum, you'll find many many many answers to your questions and p.s., welcome to FlyerTalk

... and to partially answer your question... since itn is still showing seats available for sale on your flights, chances are, your flight is not overbooked.

If you really want to find out whether or not a flight is overbooked, call NW. They're obligated to tell you.

From then on it's a crud shoot. Good luck and remember to report your bump, if you do end up getting one, on www.bumptracker.com

Aloha

[This message has been edited by slippahs (edited Dec 03, 2003).]

Speaking of bumptracker.com, don't you think that's a bad idea? You're telling the airlines which flights to stop overbooking so much (as if they didn't know).

Maybe we should stuff bumptracker.com with fake bumps to fake out the airlines.

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"It's as easy as 1, 2, C" -- Kelly, Married With Children

What's the difference between Bumptracker and the data airlines keep?

Airlines do record bumps and the compensation they give out and base their decision to oversell future flights on this data as well as other variables.

Bumptracker merely allows one to see this data in a reported form and make an educated guess as to what flights might possibly be oversold.

In any case, logging your bumps on bumptracker doesn't affect an airline's descision as to which flights to oversell since they already know each and every oversold flight.

I disagree. Flights listed on bumptracker.com are more likely to attract people who are less likely to no-show than the average airline passenger, so an airline would be wise to mine the data and cut back overbooking on those flights.

Not a big deal, though, as the amount of data on bumptracker.com is very, very small, relatively speaking, and the number of seats the airline should reduce from inventory is probably no more than 1, given that not many people are actively trying to book on bumpable flights.

In theory, though, we should try the fake-out method to maintain the upper hand.

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"It's as easy as 1, 2, C" -- Kelly, Married With Children

But you see my point is that the airlines would have this information whether or not it was listed on bumptracker...

In which case, adding fake bumps to the bumptracker system wouldn't benefit us anyways because airlines would just cut back the flights they see as overbooked on their computers.