

If so many people are stranded, why are planes flying with empty seats? - jaf12duke
http://blog.flightcaster.com/if-so-many-people-are-stranded-why-are-planes

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brainid
My experience was this. On a call to Delta on 4/20 I was told it would be
Monday 4/26 before a seat was available. 15 minutes later I booked a DELTA/KLM
flight to my destination that afternoon through travelocity (at a high cost).

When I complained to Delta after returning I was told the travel websites buy
seats in block and resell them, so that is why they could not give me a seat.
Oh, and there were several empty seats on the flight.

~~~
cperciva
_Oh, and there were several empty seats on the flight._

Which just means that some people bought tickets and didn't turn up (and that
there wasn't anyone on standby for that flight).

Airlines can't win: If they overbook flights, people complain about being
kicked off; if they don't overbook flights, people complain about how there
were empty seats even though they were told there were no tickets available.

~~~
TheSOB88
Didn't he just say Travelocity owned the tickets? If the airline's not
directing the stranders to where they can actually buy flights (or the flights
are too expensive on e.g. Travelocity), there will be empty seats.

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algorias
The logistics involved are hard. Really really hard. These are not boxes that
are stranded. They're people. And people move around, change their minds, make
other plans, book themselves multiple times, etc.

~~~
jfornear
Right, but by definition a "stranded passenger" is someone just waiting to get
on a flight back to their home. If people make other plans, change their
minds, move, book a Disney cruise back to the states, etc. they are no longer
the "stranded passengers" airline companies are concerned with.

At the very least, there are more people wanting to fly now than historical
levels due to the volcano. That there are empty seats is very interesting (to
me at least). ;)

~~~
argv_empty
I think the issue is knowing which are the stranded passengers and which are
no longer stranded.

------
jfornear
Assuming airlines are trying to maximize their bottom lines, if they want to
capitalize on this spike in demand to offset the lower demand that resulted
from the flight restrictions, they might be wanting to slowly fill up flights
by gradually lowering higher prices.

The idea would be to only have a few empty seats. If the flights are full,
their prices might be too low. Eventually everything will return to historical
equilibrium as stranded passengers exit the market.

Altruistic airlines might go out of their way to get stranded passengers back
to their homes, which could build customer loyalty and long-run revenues,
however.

(This is just all wild speculation.)

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, but people have already paid for the tickets, and the airline is obliged
to transport them. They are already weeks late on their obligation, which
doesn't make them look good. Using this time to play pricing games ("ah, those
stranded travelers already paid us, we'll transport them whenever") is going
to subject the airlines to the attention of government regulators, which is
not something they enjoy. Presumably.

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sdfx
The models are optimized for the 99% of the cases without any special
circumstance. Airlines overbook by x% because they know that a lot of people
won't show up, they increase the price over time etc.

I can see that an event like this can throw the whole system out of whack.
It's not obvious how the parameters should be altered. Without any data about
how many people will buy more than one ticket in a situation like this,
predictions are impossible.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"they increase the price over time etc."_

Interesting note: I have a friend in the airline industry, and according to
him time-to-flight has no effect on ticket price. Rather, airlines assign
prices to seats - and sell from the cheapest first. So theoretically if
_nobody_ buys tickets to a flight, it will still be cheap even the day before
departure.

~~~
goatforce5
I guess different airlines have different pricing models, but other people
have built businesses around predicting when airfare prices will fluctuate.
See:

<http://www.bing.com/travel/about/howWorks.do>

(nee Farecast.com)

