Tag Archives for involuntary denied boarding.
My take is that he maybe should run away from this relationship? I don’t claim to have very much data to work off of, but there do seem to be warning signs.
Wednesday’s American Airlines flight 2484 from Las Vegas to Philadelphia had about two dozen more passengers than they could fly. The airline started offering vouchers to people that would give up their seat, but they weren’t getting enough volunteers. So first class passengers reportedly took matters into their own hands, started a collection, and topped off American’s offer so that passengers would get off of the flight and they could leave.
According to Delta President Glen Hauenstein, cancellation rates vary far more than they did before the pandemic so Delta plans to increase overbooking and ‘see what happens’ – because without change fees on most fares, people are changing plans more at the last minute. This could result in more passengers denied boarding.
Denied boarding compensation is a cooperation game. As long as everyone sticks together, the total compensation amount will be higher. But as the compensation offer goes up the incentive for a given passenger to defect gets greater and greater.
TV writer Mike Drucker observed this in action, and watched passengers in New York stick together, as the airline’s offer went up and up.
The Department of Transportation has finalized its rule increasing the minimum amount of cash an airline has to pay a passenger for involuntarily denying them boarding, and banning airlines from denying boarding to passengers that have already boarded. The rule increases the maximum amount airlines can be on the hook for when they mishandle domestic checked baggage as well. These changes go into effect April 13, 2021.
With U.S. airlines eliminating change fees on domestic trips (excluding basic economy fares), will that least to more cancellations? And will higher cancellation rates mean that airlines need to overbook flights more than before?
If more people can change plans without penalty, will we have more people changing plans – so more people not taking the seats they’ve booked? Will that mean airlines need to sell even more seats for each flight to make up for it?
One lawyer who has practically made a career out of enforcing airline rules in court has filed a lawsuit against an airline to get them to pay the cost of a private jet for his client after an overbooking caused the passenger to be denied boarding. The jet was the only way to make it to their destination on the same day.
The Department of Transportation fined Spirit Airlines $350,000 for pretending that passengers who were involuntarily denied boarding had volunteered to take later flights, and undercompensating those passengers. The U.S. government found ”a pattern of non-compliance with the compensation scheme” at Spirit.
Spirit referred to involuntary denied boarding “as the “volunteer option”, and customers were forced to sign an “acknowledgement form” stating so.”
Airlines are tightening their belts, trying to cut what it costs them to give out denied boarding compensation to passengers when they overbook a flight. Both United and American have copied Delta in soliciting ‘bids’ from customers for what compensation they’d accept, hoping to avoid bidding wars at the gate.
In the wake of United’s April 2017 passenger dragging incident – where David Dao was told to give up his seat for two crewmembers and refused, winding up bloodied by airport – there was a huge public backlash against bumping passengers off of overbooked flights. And airlines started paying out far more compensation to avoid involuntarily denying boarding to passengers.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
