
Which Airline Kicks Off the Most Passengers? - curtis
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/which-airline-kicks-most-passengers
======
fencepost
What's more interesting than the numbers is the linked article[1] about how
Delta avoids problems by asking passengers on overbooked flights how much
they'd want in order to give up their seat at check in time. By doing it early
and without the other passengers around it eliminates possible bidding-up at
the gate and lets them have a list of low cost bumps ready as soon as it's
needed.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-delta-
masters-t...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-delta-masters-the-
game-of-overbooking-flights/)

~~~
rdtsc
Yeah I saw that. That's brilliant. First thing is getting people thinking
about getting money, so they are already primed, fantasizing about it. Then
the hint about "Delta will pick the lowest bid first". Those interested
already are willing to play but now have to think of others outbidding them so
they lower the bid. And lastly and most importantly, it lets people who never
want to participate (such as well, doctors who have to be there for their
patients) not participate.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I fly Delta. They've paid me over $1,000 in cash [1] to bump me off a $500
flight. I don't think United pays that much. Instead, they get aggressive.

[1] _American Express gift card_

~~~
fastball
Actually, airlines in the US are mandated by USDOT to pay you 4x the ticket
price or $1350 (whichever is lower) for a domestic delay >2hrs or an
international delay >4hrs.

If the bump delays you by <2hrs (generally unlikely), it's 2x ticket price or
$650 (again, whichever is lower).

You were probably entitled to $1350, so you really didn't do that great.

That is also how much the United passenger is/was entitled to.

~~~
1024core
> are mandated by USDOT to pay you 4x the ticket price

In the case of United, if by "pay" you mean give you a voucher (or N vouchers
of value 1/N of the total, only 1 of which can be used at a time) for travel
on their airline, to be used in 1 year, not to be combined with other offers,
yada yada... No wonder no one wanted to take them up!

~~~
tedsanders
Incorrect. By law, at least, cash is mandated. Not a voucher.

Relevant text:

>Except as provided below, the airline must give each passenger who qualified
for involuntary denied boarding compensation a payment by cash or check for
the amount specified above... The air carrier may offer free or discounted
transportation in place of the cash payment.... The passenger may insist on
the cash/check payment...

Full text:

>Except as provided below, the airline must give each passenger who qualified
for involuntary denied boarding compensation a payment by cash or check for
the amount specified above, on the day and at the place the involuntary denied
boarding occurs. If the airline arranges alternate transportation for the
passenger's convenience that departs before the payment can be made, the
payment shall be sent to the passenger within 24 hours. The air carrier may
offer free or discounted transportation in place of the cash payment. In that
event, the carrier must disclose all material restrictions on the use of the
free or discounted transportation before the passenger decides whether to
accept the transportation in lieu of a cash or check payment. The passenger
may insist on the cash/check payment or refuse all compensation and bring
private legal action.

------
colmvp
At the end of the day, this is less about stats and more to do with process.
Overbooking happens. So do delays and shitty experiences with airlines. We get
it.

The difference was that United had many options at their disposal and chose
one of the least humane methods in a civilized society.

Furthermore, the leaked internal memo by the CEO shows a clear lack of empathy
and I see a lot of similarities between what happened on the plane and the PR
aftermath. In both cases, instead of choosing alternative choices that would
come with some cost to the company(increasing the bounty to give up the seat,
apologizing profusely for the incident) in exchange for rectifying a
situation, they doubled down on bad choices (violent removal, written
accusations against the passengers behaviour).

Honestly, this would be non-story had they just upped the compensation to
anyone interested in the plane.

And on a side note, it's kind of sad how one of humans greatest technological
achievements, the airplane, is associated with one of the least liked
experiences in North America, namely going through airports, security, and
dealing with airlines.

~~~
cmurf
Airplanes are great. Airlines used to be great when there was competition. But
we've ignored the merit of competition law, and allowed too much
conglomeration in the name of profits. And the airlines are very profitable,
but they are not competitive in particular on service and customer
satisfaction.

The last few mergers shouldn't have been permitted.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I'd argue that it was competition that made the circumstances you see today -
first class of today resembles standard class in the 70s for about the same
relative price.

Airlines increasingly wanted to grow the flying population, by lowering
prices. More people have access to airplanes now, and so they have turned into
what was traditionally the service and experience of a bus.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Nah. The experience in a bus: Nobody asks for your ID. You can pay cash.
Nobody frisks you when boarding. Nobody irradiates you to watch nude images of
you. You don't need to unpack your luggage half the time. You can stow your
suitcase in half a minute, and can get it back equally fast.

We would be so lucky if flying had the service and experience of a bus!

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Ha, fair point.

If you upgrade enough to private then you can get the flying experience of the
50s: Small Planes, no security, walk on the tarmac.

It's like paying more puts you further back in time.

------
nebabyte
> By contrast, Southwest—which has been taunting United over the Dr. Dao
> incident—has a slightly lower rate of overbooking than the other airlines

I get the feeling that this is missing the point

> Like it or not, about 40,000 people a year are kicked off planes against
> their will. Some of them were standby passengers who knew this might happen.
> Some weren't. Given those numbers, the interesting thing isn't that United
> had to remove one of these folks by force. The interesting thing is that
> apparently it's never happened before.

> It hasn't happened while cell phones were recording the whole thing, anyway

Did this person even watch the video? I seriously doubt regular instances of
violent deplanings wouldn't be a point of pop culture by now if "against their
will" always ended with a man being dragged bleeding off a plane

~~~
deelowe
Seriously. Is the author trying to claim that getting knocked out and a bloody
lip is par for the course or even, i don't know, has EVER happened in any of
these 40,000 yearly instances?

------
1024core
This misconception that the flight was "overbooked" has to die. The flight was
NOT OVERBOOKED. It was sold out, but definitely not overbooked.

The reason that United needed 4 seats is because they had a last-minute crew
to fly to Louisville. And the law says that their own employees can NOT take
precedence over paying passengers.

EDIT: Since some asked for a citation for the latter: 14 CFR 250.2a:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.2a](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.2a)

~~~
rl3
> _And the law says that their own employees can NOT take precedence over
> paying passengers._

Do you have a citation for this?

~~~
jinfiesto
I also would like to see a citation for this. It's my understanding that
deadheading crew members are considered must-rides and that this is an
industry norm.

~~~
rl3
Likewise.

A cursory search turns up a couple links.[0][1] It seems to involve the fact
they had to deplane passengers who had already boarded, rather than merely
deny them boarding.

[0] [http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/united-
den...](http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/united-denied-
boarding-illegal/)

[1]
[https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_rvideos_just_filled_with_united_related/dg3xvja/?context=3)

------
slowmotiony
I can't wrap my head around how everyone is like "Yeah, overbooking happens,
that's just the way it is". Why the hell is it legal? If I booked two clients
on the same timeslot, collected cash from them in advance and then stood one
up and offered him a fucking coupon, I'd have a court case opened against me
the next day and I'd never find a client in the same city again. Why the hell
do airlines still get away with it in the age of online payments?

~~~
megablast
This wasn't overbooking, as was already said.

And overbooking is legal because it is not illegal.

And when you have 2% of your passengers not turning up on every flight, and
flight margins of <$100 profit per plane (during the worst times), not per
passenger, you need to overbook.

~~~
flukus
> And when you have 2% of your passengers not turning up on every flight

Why is that a problem? They've paid for a service and not used it.

~~~
plafl
It is nevertheless a wasted resource that could be used better. Indirectly it
will cause all tickets fares to fall down which will benefit the people that
actually flies. I'm not against overbooking but forcefully expelling a
passenger is just another step in the direction of making taking an airplane
just such a shitty experience. The correct, common sense, ethical and business
savvy way to proceed would have been to start bidding until some passengers
sold back their tickets. That would have been fair instead of some fixed
compensation that doesn't take into account all kinds of inconveniences you
will suffer because of losing your flight. I try to avoid taking airplanes
nowadays which is quite sad considering I'm an aerospace engineer. My only
positive thought is that airports are a nice contained experiment everybody is
forced to watch of what happens to people when there is a power imbalance,
even if you live in a democracy.

~~~
flukus
The following may not apply in other places as it does in Australia, so
correct me if I'm wrong.

Airlines don't care about unused seats, if they did we'd have last minute
rates like we do for hotels. Hotels know it's better to have someone pay $20 a
night than to have their capacity go unused at $50 so they'll drop the price
for booking a day or two in advance.

Airlines do the opposite, they charge more for booking late.

~~~
dlubarov
It's just a form of price discrimination. Early bookers are usually price-
sensitive individuals. They're prepared to shop around, or even forgo the trip
if it's too expensive. Late bookers are mostly corporate customers or price-
insensitive individuals.

So airlines make the most revenue by setting prices low early on, and higher
toward the flight date. They certainly care about unused seats, but the
revenue from expensive last-minute bookings normally outweighs the revenue
they would get from filling all remaining seats at a discounted price.

They do their best to minimize unused seats by getting the prices right early
on, and adjusting based on observed demand. But at a certain point, it makes
sense to raise prices even if it's highly likely that there will be unused
seats.

------
diiaann
I got $500 from United for being bumped on a SFO -> BOS flight. My resulting
flight was only 1.5 hours later and I got moved to #1 on the upgrade standby
list. From what it sounded like, it was a computer system that decided the
amount, not a human.

~~~
fastball
USDOT mandates that they pay you 2x the ticket price (capped at $650) for a
delay of less than two hours. So not sure what you paid for your ticket, but
you may've been entitled to an extra $150.

~~~
MagnumOpus
If somebody gets bumped involuntarily _after nobody accepted a lower
compensation_ , they can get $650.

If they offer $500 and one of the passengers takes it, he can't just rock up
after the flight to ask for more money.

~~~
fastball
Right. I meant, from the OP's perspective, he did more for the airline than he
really did for himself. Sure, he got some money. But he really helped the
airline save money and continue to justify a (in my opinion) dishonest
practice.

Maybe we need to start a Airline Passenger's Union, so that we have some
collective bargaining power when an airline wants to bump passengers, and
instead of them convincing individuals to accept _less_ than they deserve, we
convince the airlines to pay _more_ than mandated.

------
woliveirajr
Overbooking and so on: some people might not know or remember, but on ancient
times it was kind of 2 separated processes: buying the ticket was one thing,
booking a specific flight was another. You could change your initial choice of
flight (perhaps paying some fee, not the whole ticket again). Doing a no-show
wouldn't make you loose your ticket (perhaps you would, again, pay some fee).
Even the need to check-in is a consequence of that time.

Without that, things would be straightforward: buy the ticket, board the
plane, loose the ticket if you don't.

With the ticket being a different thing from a "reserved seat in a specific
flight", you end up with overbooking (selling more tickets than the flight can
handle because usually someone will loose the flight, or will change it to
another day). You end up with companies that don't want to lose the last seat
in exchange of a small fee (it's better to sell another full ticket, no?).

Perhaps prices would go up a bit. Perhaps people would be more pissed off when
they loose the flight. I don't know.

I just know that it began as a model that made sense at the time, and small
changes added-up so that we are in this situation, now.

------
cmurf
United has made threats of police force a thing before now, and it'd would
seem that's effective due to the low instance of it going any farther than
that

[http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-
united...](http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united-low-
priority-passenger-20170412-story.html)

------
tunesmith
It's worth pointing out that this article is just completely flat-out wrong.
Kevin Drum is just completely screwing up here.

The stats he references do _not_ point to de-planing - a term he invents only
for this article.

All those involuntary denial of boardings he references are _before_
passengers board the plane. Which makes a huge difference.

The paper he links to (indirectly) makes zero mention of passengers being
kicked off planes. They only make reference to involuntary denial of boarding,
which happens before passengers get on the plane.

I think there's only one other comment in this entire thread that makes this
point.

Just thinking it through a bit, you can see it makes no sense. If a plane is
oversold, how the hell do they let the passengers board? You'd have two people
trying to sit in the same seat.

------
mc32
After this incident what will likely happen is more legalese in the contract
allowing for airline discretion when it comes to bumping people involuntarily.
You'll have higher fares for guaranteed seats and lower fares (general cabin)
will enjoy the prospect of being bumped with some pre-arranged compensation
system.

It'd be nice if all airlines, other than not overbooking, chose Delta's
approach. Deplane option right as you check in.

~~~
caseysoftware
It's not "deplane" if you're not on the plane yet.

Also, it's come out that United's so-called "random" method was a sort based
on frequent flier status and then (potentially) price paid for ticket. If
that's really the case, they targeted their least valuable one-time customers
first.. aka people who "next time" was months or years down the road.

As someone with status, I get their reasoning but let's be honest and not call
it "random."

~~~
ajdlinux
Boarding priority rules that discriminate on status are explicitly permitted
by US regulations.
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.3](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.3)

~~~
caseysoftware
I have no problem with that but then let's stop calling this random.

------
markdown
Title should read "Which US Airline Kicks Off The Most Passengers?"

------
mnarayan01
> Like it or not, about 40,000 people a year are kicked off planes against
> their will. Some of them were standby passengers who knew this might happen.

Well at least we have numbers and pretty graphs.

~~~
nebabyte
Where's the pretty graph for "against their will" versus "violently against
their will"?

------
chrismcb
These were not people that were deplaned, they were people that were denied
boarding. Two totally different things.

