London - Counter-intuitively, overbooking seats on commercial flights is good practice for an airline and beneficial for passengers – as long as it is handled properly.
In a business as fraught with uncertainty as air travel, selling more tickets than there are seats available is rational. On a flight with 200 booked, typically 10 will be “no shows”.
Double-booking seats is a good way to ensure planes fly as full as possible, which should be welcomed for reducing per-passenger impact on the environment while keeping fares low. It also has the unintended, but useful, consequence of helping people with an urgent need to travel to find space on flights that are, theoretically at least, already full.
In the US, when an airline’s predictions of no-shows go awry, the scenario is normally handled pleasantly and positively – gate staff just keep on raising the bidding until there are enough volunteers prepared to fly later. If the promise of $200 (about R2 000) and a flight this evening doesn’t secure enough willing folk, then how about $300 or an upgrade?
The European Commission’s rules on passengers’ rights were sensibly designed to encourage this kind of good behaviour. The rules obliged carriers to seek volunteers before offloading anyone against their will and forced them to buy seats on a rival’s flights, if necessary, to get people where they need to be.
But the system is not working. There are numerous examples where these rules are not followed – with passengers not only distressed about missing a meeting, holiday or event but misled about their entitlement. This is poor service and bad business. It gives a bad name to a sensible, useful process that should have public support for minimising waste.
The Independent