How do airlines get away with over-selling flights?
As I understand it they do it because they dont want to lose money from people not turning up. Fine, I can see their point of view. But why dont they just not give refunds to those that do not turn up.
They should leave home in plenty of time to get there.
How can they justify leaving people stranded when they reasonably expected that because they have a ticket they would get on the flight?
2007-08-18 11:23:27 · 7 answers · asked by futuretopgun101 5 in Travel ➔ Air Travel
dont i know it lol.
they over-sold our flight by 75 PEOPLE!!!! i mean if you are going to oversell... isnt 10 enough?????
but 75!!!! and they didnt tell anyone they oversold. and then we were waiting in this LOOOONG queue for HOURS and we were nearly near the front!!! and then they announced it.
since we were one of the few near the front going to england (it was a connecting flight we were taking so many people were going france) they go they may have seats on another plane with another airline. so we waited there for another few hours. they had spare seats so they started giving out boarding passes. now my family and i had been waiting for AGESSSS and what did they do? they turned around at the end and said they had 3seats left!!!! now there were 6 of us (excluding my father who had come back a few weeks early cos of work) and all but my older sister and mum were under 16!!!! so we refused the 3 seats.
and then they made us wait another hour for a car to take us on a drive to a hotel. we were stranded for 2days. then we got a flight to another airport but in the same country!!! we arrived at 3am and we had to be ready by 8am so we could get a flight back to england!!!!
my youngest and older sisters missed the first days of school. my brother and i arrived the day before our school started. so much for sleeping of jetlag.
i know this doesnt answer your question... but i had to rant lol.
it wasnt that bad lol. we got to terrorise the hotel receptionists lol.
smile =D
2007-08-19 00:54:06 · answer #1 · answered by Smile =D 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I can understand why they would oversell if the tickets are refundable. But these days most people's tickets are non-refundable, so the airline doesn't lose money when the person doesn't show up, because that empty seat is paid for. So now what the airline wants to do is sell that same seat twice!
2007-08-19 10:05:46 · answer #2 · answered by averagebear 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In most cases they are over BOOKing flights not over SELLing as one of the other posters said they expect a number of pax not to show up. If they have your money they are fairly sure that you will show up for the flight however if it is just booked then they aren't sure if you will. I know both words are the same to the pax s but they are different to the airlines the sold seat has a bum with money attatched to it whilst the other is just a promise to buy the seat once I get to the airport.
A long time ago one of my cousins would book many seats with different names on airlines to make sure that he could travel stand-by for cheap
2007-08-19 19:04:48 · answer #3 · answered by Dangermanmi6 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You make a couple of good points, but let's say you were caught in a traffic jam because of a terrible accident on your way to the airport, would you like to be told you're out possibly a thousand dollars or more (sometimes much more)because of no fault of your own? Many people that show up late are often charged a fair amount of money to re-schedule. I'm not defending the airlines, but over-booking and making sure flights are full helps to keep costs down for those of us who do show up on time and many of the people who show up late are penalized one way or another, sometimes quite severely.
2007-08-19 03:32:47 · answer #4 · answered by Gerald J 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
IATA, the association that regulates all the worlds airline have a law that allows airlines to oversell their flgihts. They have a monthly magazine called the OAG, Offical airline guide, that give's the statistics about how on average, 5%( for example) of people won't turn up for their flights, it's on this basis that the airlines are then allowed to sell over the amount of actuall seats that they have.
I know it's frustrating, but they get away with it.
2007-08-18 18:34:37 · answer #5 · answered by Lil Star 2 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Just to let you know, people are allowed to voluntarily give up their seat for some miles, vouchers or something. It's not that they lose money, it's the fact that people aren't filling up the airplane. Also with connecting flights, some people miss their connection because of previous delays.
2007-08-18 22:13:16 · answer #6 · answered by JaxJagsFan 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Cause they are MONEY HUNGRY mother EFFERS!!!
2007-08-18 18:28:47 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 3⤋