chrisl137

Spirit's cancellation policies can result in some interesting unintended trips. One of my cousins and his girlfriend had $9 tickets on Spirit to go from DTW to florida for a weekend. When they got to the airport there were only a few other people on the flight and Spirit cancelled it (and tried to pretend it wasn't because they'd lose a ton of money on it) and tried to tell everybody "here's your $9, go away". My cousin's GF told them they couldn't do that, and that it had been hard for her to get the time off for the trip, and that the airline had to fly them *somewhere*, so what planes in the next few hours have seats?". They got a flight to LA and came and hung out at my place for a long weekend - it was nice to have the surprise visit.

ellenyc

This was an "unusual case" but not an unsolvable one. A passenger offered to be VDB for $1600. UA chose to laugh at the suggestion, which looks even more short-sighted in light of the stories about what DL offered to passengers impacted by weather.

There are very few situations where I would envision every single passenger on the plane would refuse VDB for anything less than an extortion.

ellenyc

Absolutely. It's tantamount to bait and switch or deceptive sales practices.

mdkowals

To all those worried about VDB getting to expensive, it would be hard for that to happen in all but extreme cases, and the extreme cases can get handled by a separate policy. They key is that as long as a reasonable member of the general public agrees with the airline's definition of extreme, a PR crisis is averted.


For most normal circumstances, if you overbook 5% and have 1 flight crew that may need a last second deadhead, at most you're looking needing to appease 10% of the passengers. An airplane manifest, consisting of a bunch of strangers, 50%+ of whom aren't frequent flyers and whom, even despite of this incident, aren't going to know the rules anyway really aren't going to have the power to collude and drive the cost infinitely.


I think a more intelligent app is the key. As it stands, I think the VDB market gets inflated on flights TO hubs because they so preferentially want people who's final destination IS the hubs to be the volunteers. If the app of your trip shows your flight, plus the number of open seats on each remaining flights from the hub to your final destination (for say - 12 hours) it will allow people to navigate their situation much quicker. The gate agent can say "We need X volunteers to take the Y flight out of here 3 hours later", and with a quick glance the individual passenger can figure it out themselves if it will work and make a proposal to the gate agent.

High Technology

Something like this would seem to be simple enough and fairly compensate the affected passenger. I don't know about the upgrade, though - that would be a bonus, and I think what we really want is something that provides fair compensation on an apples to apples basis.

Fuerhermore, no boarded passenger shall be removed from their flight or class of service unless there is a safety related reason. Such a situation would include boarding more passengers than the flight can accommodate (in the cars of duplicate seat assignments which somehow continue to happen on occasion). In the case of a downgrade, the passenger shall be entitled to a choice between IDB compensation and a seat on the next flight in their booked class of service or the formula above to take a seat in a lower class cabin on the selected flight.

Min addition, in any VDB or IDB situation a $25 meal voucher shall be offered if the next flight is more than 2 hours and 2 vouchers if more than 6 hours. In the event that the next flight is after midnight (i.e. The following day) the passenger shall be provided their choice of a hotel room or $100 cash (the cash option to offset the costs of returning home if the event occurs at the passengers home airport or they otherwise have a place to stay).

Lastly, all affected passengers shall also be entitled to a full refund for all remaining segments if they choose not to accept alternative transportation from the airline.

mdkowals

Another quick fix is to discontinue overbooking on the last flight of a day to any given city, and maybe even stop selling seats at 95% on this last flight. Plan on this being the overfill flight due to the tremendous value change that an overnight inconvenience has vs. just a few hours. Thi

artemis

I agree completely. The other change I'd make is the one Delta is making: empowering gate agents and their immediate supervisors to make much higher VDB compensation without having to involve someone much higher in the chain of authority. If that United gate agent had had the authority to cut a $1600 voucher right on the spot, this whole mess may never have occured (since there apparently was a passenger who was willing to offload in place of Dr. Dao for that level of compensation).

Gate agents and ticket agents are NOT "low level personnel." They are the public face of any airline. Get good, competent, trustworthy people into those positions, and then give them the tools and the authority they need to actually do their jobs properly, and watch these problems go away.

Absolutely. People who might otherwise be tempted by a voucher offer are rightfully wary of settling for "funny money" because (for very good reasons) they don't trust that they will actually be able to use it. And that's entirely an airline-created problem.

PaulInTheSky

1. Change of aircraft equipment -> For the love of god, call the pax in advance, or allow the passengers to just change the flight right in the United clubs/1K desk. Don't get them all to the gate to do it. What's the problem of calling the pax in advance and trying to make VDB offers in advance?

2. If scheduling system assigns the crew to be at specific flights, they better book them into the flight, and the crew better be on time. If they try to get on the flight in early stand-by, under no circumstances their seats are called 'booked', and in no way they can pull a guy off the aircraft. If they are late to the original scheduled flight, tough luck, either arrange the transportation by themselves or ask UA if they can work something out with the crew who is late.

3. VDB - Can be at the gate or onboard. IDB - Better be only right at the gate. Worst-case: You would have to IDB the pax onboard only if the stand-by pax who got cleared but the original pax who reserved for the flights are ontime at T-15, or T-15/20/25 INTL, depending on the airport. If crew is scheduled to be on the flight, they are treated as the booked pax, and shouldn't be on stand-by(This also confuses me why the heck those crew members need to get on the flight but they are not booked to begin with.
No way in hell the crew members are on standby if the crew scheduling system tells them to get on that flight.) Just cut it if you are minutes late, take the next flight.

4. Increase the bump. Take a look at what DL is doing now. If DL can make $9950 possible, please don't tell me UA can't do the same.

5. Politely, and please may I add, politely, explain to the IDBed customers what's going on. If you limit the IDB to be only at the gate, you actually save a lot of hassle to have to forcefully remove the passengers onboard.

pinniped

Interestingly enough, I've received this phone call 4 or 5 times in my life - always from AA. Up to a week in advance of a flight, and *usually* asking me to switch to one flight later at night out of Chicago to either LHR or CDG. Small voucher offer...maybe $200 to bump my itin back by 2 hours. It's clear that they aren't desperate, but at least they recognize an opportunity to shift people around a bit in advance and minimize the need for more expensive VDB/IDB at the gate.

I'm surprised they haven't coded this functionality into their app yet.

cur

that's not a reasonable goal. this idb situation happened because 4 crew showed up last minute in order to preserve the outbound flight at the downline station, not because the airline egregiously oversold and didn't figure it out until everyone was seated. whether ua knew about this hours out and could have avoided it or whether this happened with zero notice (my guess is an obvious communication breakdown between ux and the ua gate agents). also the w+b issues on smaller planes which can cause idb. idbs are a fact of life (at a minuscule amount of total trips taken) unfortunately.

this is smart, and i don't think it even requires an algorithm, just the ability in res to sort flights by most oversold, and have an employee whose job is to try to sell oversold pax onto another flight. i'm flexible with my schedules and i'd love to re-arrange, have long layovers, and get paid to do it.

pinniped

We may be saying the same thing here: I suggest that zero-IDB can be a goal, and an airline can get incredibly close by using technology better. I realize they cannot fully get to zero.

I don't believe IDB will be banned outright as some suggest. I continue to remain in favor of overselling, whether to paying passengers or with confirmed crew movements as part of the passenger load. Even the best technology and intentions of an airline can't prevent a broken seat, a weight issue, or some other reason that an IDB *could* happen.

The only regulatory fix is a simple one: make the IDB cash compensation meaningful, require each airline to fully publish their entire IDB algorithm, and provide some simple consumer protections on the instruments offered as VDB. Don't need to overhaul the system or change airline revenue management models. Just a measured action to provide some basic consumer protections that don't exist today.

erlich

For all of those here still suggesting how to protect airlines from extreme corner cases, I can assure you when airlines design their policies and pricing they are not asking themselves, "well what about this case where we collude and screw the customers over, let's avoid that."

Just go with the simplest solution. No limits VDB. They'll figure it out.

GadgetFreak

I completely disagree. The current system is not "fine" and I don't mean in this extreme case. Customers should not be subject to IDBs except in extreme cases. People are forgetting that an extra $800 in funny money would have apparently solved this problem. People always have a price, on some of their travels. On other travels people can't afford the disruption. The airlines should let the customer decide by paying for volunteers.

GadgetFreak

There are no limits on VDB now. UA didn't want to pay more.

Tblack15

I agree with not allowing last flight to overbook. This is a simple and concise plan. Covers the passengers, and in the long run, I'm sure one could prove that this saves the airline compensation.

Sadly, it will never happen.