Collision Course

I was reading a story the other day about passengers in Canada being bumped off a commercial flight and reflecting that things people seem to be taking a different view of these events from years past. For as long as I can remember – about forty-five years at this writing – getting bumped off of a flight was a regular part of air travel. Airlines don’t like to discuss such things, but every airline ticket includes a bunch of boilerplate about conditions under which they don’t have to transport you anywhere OR give back your money, and what they are required to do if any of those conditions occur. I’ve had flights cancelled because of weather, equipment failure, and because there were only a few of us ticketed on the flight and the company figured it would be cheaper to pay for our hotels for the night than to lose that much money flying an almost-empty plane. I’ve also seen people get bumped – denied passage on the flight for which they purchased tickets – because the airline had over-sold the flight, although that happens less in recent years since the airlines have started offering people free tickets and other travel rewards to voluntarily give up their seats. But I’ve rarely seen anyone start demanding that their national government take action about such an event…

You can pick up the original Yahoo story here, but the basic idea is a couple was flying home from a vacation when they were bumped off their flight because Air Canada had sold more tickets on that flight than their airplane had seats, resulting in their not being able to get home in time to pick up their small children from the sitters who were watching the kids. In the end, the parents were most of day late in getting home, after the airline finally bumped someone else to make room for them on a later flight. As atrocities go it’s not very impressive; I have no reason to believe that the children were ever in danger, for example, and there is no indication that being delayed had any significant long-term effect on the passengers – although I doubt they will take any chances with their timing in the future. What struck me about the story was the outrage it seems to have generated, and the complete lack of understanding regarding why this practice will almost certainly continue…

I’m not going to argue the ethics of overbooking an airplane knowing that for a non-zero percentage of your flights that will mean that some people fail to make their destination; that’s a post for another day. But why does anyone use this practice in the first place? It seems as though a business that is essentially a commodity – most passengers don’t really care which airline they fly on, provided it gets them where they want to go on time – would want to make every attempt to maintain good customer relations and a positive public image. What the passengers don’t realize is that they are the cause of overbooking, and that it occurs because they demand it…

If an airplane takes off with empty seats it is losing money; the fuel savings (because of the lower weight onboard) do not approach the revenue lost on those empty seats. But not all passengers will be able to be on time for every flight, so the airline sells more than 100% of the seats, hoping that enough people will fail to show up to make good the overage. The airline could cover those costs in other ways, of course – through the use of expensive fees for cancellation or rebooking of a flight, or by raising the overall ticket price to cover the cost of people dropping out at the last minute. But passengers will not tolerate either of these things, and will gravitate towards airline with lower prices and fees, even if their chance of being bumped off a flight is much greater. It’s still a chance, you see, whereas the higher fares and fees are a certainty…

Time was, being bumped off of a flight was an unpleasant event, but it didn’t happen all that much, and most people just accepted it as a possible consequence of flying. Today, more and more people are missing their flights, or simply blowing them off, but still demanding low fares and minimal rebooking charges – and when they don’t get their own way, they’re complaining to their national governments or bringing civil lawsuits or both. But the costs of that litigation and government action increase the cost of doing business for the airline, and all of the prices they charge the customer have to be raised to keep pace. If we’re really in a feedback loop, and if nothing is done to stop it, eventually the current airline business model will become completely unsustainable and the industry as we know it will collapse…

Not exactly the end of civilization, I admit. But I still hope I’m wrong about this…