Cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages are great, but they do little to mitigate the frustration passengers that really needed to make a flight feel when they are involuntarily bumped off their flights. The good news is that a lot fewer passengers are being bumped that a decade ago.
The rate at which passengers were bumped has fallen 35 percent last year vs. 10 years ago: 13 out of every 10,000 air travelers were bumped in 2009 vs. 20 per 10,000 in 1999. This is particularly encouraging when you consider that airlines have significantly reduced their capacity, resulting in fewer, but more crowded, flights.
In over 90 percent of the cases where passengers were overbooked the airlines were able to motivate volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for compensation.
Most airlines (JetBlue being the exception) continue to defend overbooking flights because this practice makes up for passengers who do not show up for flights. Empty seats equate to lost revenue.
Airlines over the last decade have become much more sophisticated and successful in forecasting how many passengers will not show up for any given flight.
Part of this success is due to the airlines instituting more restrictive ticketing policies. Most carriers force prospective fliers to purchase their tickets within 24 hours of making a reservation. Those travelers are then faced with steep penalties (paying an average of $150 to change a domestic ticket) if they decide to later alter their flight plans.
Airlines are also using new software that forecasts the likelihood of the number of passengers not showing up for flights based on specific routes, the time of day, whether a holiday is involved, what prices passengers paid, and how many passengers hold refundable tickets.
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