So she finally got away from the Isle of Wonders and now I will help my brother prepare the claim. MSE has a template for this and Iberia is in the scheme so we will be going for:
- the max £520 statutory - according to MSE we clearly qualify - amount equivalent to the refreshments they should have provided her - the hotel bill - transport to and from hotel - transport to LHR
I really think there should be something else too, but can’t think of anything. Not sure if my brother’s extra journey to/from LGW to help her out would fly. Maybe I’ll just channel my inner Peaky Blinders Alfie and add another £100 for being a bunch of *****😉
Hopefully its another thread that will help others in future. Unfortunately this sort of nonsense isn’t going to go away.
Not good - But personally i love BA. Been brilliant for me in the past on a few occasions. Last one was when we booked 8 people all inclusive to Dom rep for my wife's 50th and my middle ones 21st then covid broke and all was cancelled - they gave us a full refund without asking with in week of the lockdown - friends of mine waited ages through Virgin and others.
@PragueAddick you've had lots of sensible, useful advice on this thread and it's good to see that your SIL appears to have been sorted out with a good flight. I would like to offer one extra bit of advice that, although it won't help this time, should make things a whole lot easier when booking flights in future: use a competent travel agent, instead of going direct to an airline.
I guess that’s good advice, although I’d have hoped that a simple point-to-point purchase would have been ok on the website. Of course they chose the cheaper option which wasn’t quite so simple.
But on that subject one thing I can say is never ever use booking.com for flights even if you use them for hotels. My wife found that out recently and we discovered a whole world of pain out there. Fortunately she was only in Amsterdam. Booking.com thinks its travel’s answer to Amazon but it doesnt want to invest in even the basics of service that goes with the sector.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
I can't see a high percentage of people booking flights on a sold out plane.
I am not sure from your post if you are responding to @Stig. Anyway the issue is that currently you have no idea when you book, how busy the flight will be. You can book months in advance and be randomly kicked off the flight while someone else who booked the day before the flight, in the same ticket class, gets to fly. Stig proposes some relatively simple remedies. However, it would require at least a European- wide commitment ( as we have already with the compensation scheme)
I can't see a high percentage of people booking flights on a sold out plane.
Maybe not, but as Prague says, that's the point. At the moment people are buying blind. Surely such sales are only fair if the consumer has the correct information about their flight status.
If these overflow tickets aren't popular, and it's easy to see why they might not be, then it's up to the airlines to incentivise them.
Back to my initial point though, how on earth have they got the right to sell something that they've already sold?
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
It’s not difficult, and they do it already. The only problem is they set the limit above the number of seats available. If they oversell by 10%, they know a 200 seat plane is sold out when it hits 220. If they didn’t you could have 500 people buying that flight.
If they wanted to do something more fair, they would sell you an alternative flight, and you could elect to go on an advanced standby list, with a set cutoff, so you’d know 2 days before your flight whether you’d been switched. After that it would just be normal standby at the airport if you wanted to hang around in case someone doesn’t turn up.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
Having spent several hundred million implementing the above for no real benefit, on the day of the flight, for operational reasons, the aircraft type is changed from a 737 Max 8 to a 737 Max 9, 15 people are bumped off and so we are back to square 1.
Thank you very much for your explanation Chizz. I appreciate the effort you've put in to explaining why my suggestion would not be feasible. What it doesn't do though is explain how it is reasonable, let alone legal to sell something that they do not own. For me, the cost of implementing tax refunds doesn't come close to providing a reasonable explanation.
@PragueAddick you've had lots of sensible, useful advice on this thread and it's good to see that your SIL appears to have been sorted out with a good flight. I would like to offer one extra bit of advice that, although it won't help this time, should make things a whole lot easier when booking flights in future: use a competent travel agent, instead of going direct to an airline.
I guess that’s good advice, although I’d have hoped that a simple point-to-point purchase would have been ok on the website. Of course they chose the cheaper option which wasn’t quite so simple.
But on that subject one thing I can say is never ever use booking.com for flights even if you use them for hotels. My wife found that out recently and we discovered a whole world of pain out there. Fortunately she was only in Amsterdam. Booking.com thinks its travel’s answer to Amazon but it doesnt want to invest in even the basics of service that goes with the sector.
Can I ask what the specific problem with booking.com is for flights. I have never used them before for this, but have done so for an internal flight within India in February. I was having difficulty doing direct with Air India.
@PragueAddick you've had lots of sensible, useful advice on this thread and it's good to see that your SIL appears to have been sorted out with a good flight. I would like to offer one extra bit of advice that, although it won't help this time, should make things a whole lot easier when booking flights in future: use a competent travel agent, instead of going direct to an airline.
I guess that’s good advice, although I’d have hoped that a simple point-to-point purchase would have been ok on the website. Of course they chose the cheaper option which wasn’t quite so simple.
But on that subject one thing I can say is never ever use booking.com for flights even if you use them for hotels. My wife found that out recently and we discovered a whole world of pain out there. Fortunately she was only in Amsterdam. Booking.com thinks its travel’s answer to Amazon but it doesnt want to invest in even the basics of service that goes with the sector.
Can I ask what the specific problem with booking.com is for flights. I have never used them before for this, but have done so for an internal flight within India in February. I was having difficulty doing direct with Air India.
I don’t know for sure, but would need to look at how they are selling flights under ATOL licenses, and whether it’s theirs or third party suppliers, so they can drop out if any issues.
I assume this isn't an issue here, but there is a group of people who may second a domestic flights places as they may need to get into a country quickly. You would think that would never happen but it does with little or no honest explanation from the vendor.
Only happened once to me but I was a volunteer. It was 25 years ago now on way back from a round the world two years trip. I paid a total £1k for all my flights. On way home I was bumped and had to stay a night in LA, I got £400 plus dinner, hotel and breakfast. Next day bumped again for 4 hours for another £200 and upgrade to first class. So 24 hours = £600, hotel, 2 meals, 4 hours smashing a first class lounge and then first class home.
2. If displaying real time info of availability to buyers, corporate or private, is so difficult, how come I invariably see the legend "Only x seats available at this price" whenever I first open up ba.com and choose a flight/day of flight and see the the various offers?
3. Could you remind us why the airlines have not received payment in full for the no-shows? Is it because they are mainly fully flexible fares? Isn't there a problem rather of biz people ( a mate of mine boasts of this) who have say three flights from Vienna back to London booked on the grounds they don't know what time their meeting finishes, so they cancel two of the three late in the day? If so, there could be tighter cancellation clauses to try and deter that, no?
4. You have not addressed @Stig 's point that airlines should make a clear, unambiguous commitment that in the event of an over-booked flight they will always (under threat of regulatory punishment) seek volunteers to offload with generous compensation offers; and that all passengers who are forcibly offloaded are properly assisted by groundstaff with refreshments, assistance with re-scheduling asap, and with overnight accommodation (or as many nights as it takes). The low-costs, led by Ryanair, will hate it because that will mean more staff, properly trained. Good. Let's get this industry back to some basic levels of human decency, let alone service, even if it means the German Addicks have to pay £30 rather than £20 to get to the Valley from Bremen.
And finally, while I have never been off-loaded, I have certainly been on flights where it was happening, and I have never been that frequent a traveller (max around 16/year). It is a real issue and most likely to afflict people who bought the cheapest fare because they cannot afford more. My SIL was left completely stranded. No refreshments. No help with re-booking. No help with accommodation. Not even an unambiguous explanation of why another airline than the one she bought from was responsible for her. She was lucky that she was in London, my brother was able to come down and support her, and he in turn had his stroppy brother on WhatsApp (and he had @SporadicAddick on CL ). I am sure you know people for whom such an event could be very distressing. And if not, how about this; On a sunny August 2017 lunchtime in Prague I got the call I always dreaded from my brother. My Mum, in QE Woolwich hospital, had been given 24 hours to live. I was lucky, that I could drop everything, that I live 15 easy minutes from a generally efficient airport, that the BA app generally works well, and so does the airline, and finally that I was able to afford Club class (to minimise chance of an offloading). I was at her bedside 6 hours after the call, and btw she passed in well under 24 hours. Just imagine for the moment someone in the same position, but not so well off, who then gets the treatment my SIL got. That would be unacceptable. In fact I'm sure you''ll agree that it is unthinkable.
@PragueAddick you've had lots of sensible, useful advice on this thread and it's good to see that your SIL appears to have been sorted out with a good flight. I would like to offer one extra bit of advice that, although it won't help this time, should make things a whole lot easier when booking flights in future: use a competent travel agent, instead of going direct to an airline.
I guess that’s good advice, although I’d have hoped that a simple point-to-point purchase would have been ok on the website. Of course they chose the cheaper option which wasn’t quite so simple.
But on that subject one thing I can say is never ever use booking.com for flights even if you use them for hotels. My wife found that out recently and we discovered a whole world of pain out there. Fortunately she was only in Amsterdam. Booking.com thinks its travel’s answer to Amazon but it doesnt want to invest in even the basics of service that goes with the sector.
Can I ask what the specific problem with booking.com is for flights. I have never used them before for this, but have done so for an internal flight within India in February. I was having difficulty doing direct with Air India.
This blogpost describes it pretty well. It's not just a one-off rant, but goes into the why's and wherefore's.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
It’s a very detailed post but there are far far more complicated technical implementations already in flight. Currency exchanges integrating into 100s of data point. Stock exchanges with 100s of entry points they integrate within milliseconds. Bank transactions working in millions of shops worldwide.
The only reason airlines oversell is to maximise occupancy with an expected % no shows. When those no shows don’t materialise you get issues as above.
The airlines don’t want to fix the problem as it suits them as is and most of the time it’s fine and does not cost them.
I've known for a long time that this goes on, but I still can't fathom out how it is allowed to. Maybe I'm being naive, but doesn't everyone who has booked on a flight have to pay in advance? That being the case, by overbooking, the airlines are selling something that isn't theirs to sell.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
You're right, it's not too difficult. But it is very, very difficult and monstrously expensive. So much so that it has never been implemented.
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
It’s a very detailed post but there are far far more complicated technical implementations already in flight. Currency exchanges integrating into 100s of data point. Stock exchanges with 100s of entry points they integrate within milliseconds. Bank transactions working in millions of shops worldwide.
The only reason airlines oversell is to maximise occupancy with an expected % no shows. When those no shows don’t materialise you get issues as above.
The airlines don’t want to fix the problem as it suits them as is and most of the time it’s fine and does not cost them.
This! Airlines will make more from no shows than dishing out compensation for bumping people.
It'd be an absolute breeze to code a system that could do something Stig has suggested. Nothing complicated about it, just not wanted.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
If things were as bad and cut throat as they make out they would get out of the business. I'm always a little sceptical when I read about either profit or loss but I do understand they are in business to stay in business.
2. If displaying real time info of availability to buyers, corporate or private, is so difficult, how come I invariably see the legend "Only x seats available at this price" whenever I first open up ba.com and choose a flight/day of flight and see the the various offers?
3. Could you remind us why the airlines have not received payment in full for the no-shows? Is it because they are mainly fully flexible fares? Isn't there a problem rather of biz people ( a mate of mine boasts of this) who have say three flights from Vienna back to London booked on the grounds they don't know what time their meeting finishes, so they cancel two of the three late in the day? If so, there could be tighter cancellation clauses to try and deter that, no?
4. You have not addressed @Stig 's point that airlines should make a clear, unambiguous commitment that in the event of an over-booked flight they will always (under threat of regulatory punishment) seek volunteers to offload with generous compensation offers; and that all passengers who are forcibly offloaded are properly assisted by groundstaff with refreshments, assistance with re-scheduling asap, and with overnight accommodation (or as many nights as it takes). The low-costs, led by Ryanair, will hate it because that will mean more staff, properly trained. Good. Let's get this industry back to some basic levels of human decency, let alone service, even if it means the German Addicks have to pay £30 rather than £20 to get to the Valley from Bremen.
And finally, while I have never been off-loaded, I have certainly been on flights where it was happening, and I have never been that frequent a traveller (max around 16/year). It is a real issue and most likely to afflict people who bought the cheapest fare because they cannot afford more. My SIL was left completely stranded. No refreshments. No help with re-booking. No help with accommodation. Not even an unambiguous explanation of why another airline than the one she bought from was responsible for her. She was lucky that she was in London, my brother was able to come down and support her, and he in turn had his stroppy brother on WhatsApp (and he had @SporadicAddick on CL ). I am sure you know people for whom such an event could be very distressing. And if not, how about this; On a sunny August 2017 lunchtime in Prague I got the call I always dreaded from my brother. My Mum, in QE Woolwich hospital, had been given 24 hours to live. I was lucky, that I could drop everything, that I live 15 easy minutes from a generally efficient airport, that the BA app generally works well, and so does the airline, and finally that I was able to afford Club class (to minimise chance of an offloading). I was at her bedside 6 hours after the call, and btw she passed in well under 24 hours. Just imagine for the moment someone in the same position, but not so well off, who then gets the treatment my SIL got. That would be unacceptable. In fact I'm sure you''ll agree that it is unthinkable.
1. Do you mean this comment: "It’s not difficult, and they do it already. The only problem is they set the limit above the number of seats available. If they oversell by 10%, they know a 200 seat plane is sold out when it hits 220. If they didn’t you could have 500 people buying that flight"? If so, my answer is that airlines invariably oversell flights on the basis that the oversell is compensated by the expected no-shows. That differs by airline, route, day of the week and so forth. Sometimes it's as many as 10%, often fewer. The airlines operate on predictable routes, but sometimes, rarely, there are passengers who are bumped off.
2. You will see "only x seats available at this price" on ba.com for two reasons. First, because that price-point will be on a fare with limited availability in one specific class, in a specific cabin. Example: on BA, the economy cabin ("world traveller") has 13 classes, Y, B, H, K, M, L, V, S, N, Q, O, G and P. BA will likely make a limited number of seats available in one of those classes, at a nice, low, round-figure number, for example, they might make 8 seats available in Y class on a Heathrow-Barbados flight for £500 plus taxes. So, as soon as the flight goes on sale (maybe 12 months before the flight) they can say "only 8 seats available at £500". They can then simply "keep an eye" on the number of Y class sales they make and update ba.com accordingly. (By this method, all travel agents (connected to appropriate GDS systems) will also be able to see how many seats are available in Y class). If they find themselves overselling this class (ie Y class), they could offer other classes in the same cabin (ie B, H, K, M, L, V, S, N, Q, O, G or P). Or they might choose not to. (Of course, the airline could offer only some of the Y class fares at the lowest price; in other words, they might have 20 Y class fares, but only four priced at £500, with the rest at £700). (For some people this gets quite confusing, because the word "fare" has nothing to do with the amount of money you pay: you might have the same fare at very different prices).
The second reason is much simpler. They give you a warning that there are "only" a few seats at a certain price available in order to encourage you to buy now. You have to decide, however, whether this is merely marketing practice. (Example, if I were the airline, and I had 50 seats priced at £500, I would tell customers that I only had three at that price. Marketing, innit?)
3. This is a very common issue with high-value business passengers. The Vienna-London route will "suffer" from this less than other routes. For example, the most lucrative route in the world is London-New York (may have been surpassed since the pandemic, however, so don't quote me!). On that route, it's not uncommon for a business traveller to book a fully flexible fare on every flight from New York to London. There are 22 daily flights, ranging from BA, Virgin, Delta, United and American to Aer Lingus, JetBlue, Turkish and others. That person might book on every single flight that day, finish his meetings, get a cab to the airport, look at the departure board and just jump on the next flight to London (much as you might jump on the next train to Ramsgate from Charing Cross). He can then cancel (technically, "refund") the other 21 bookings he's made for that day, getting a full refund from each. Even after the planes have left. So, in this (hugely exaggerated) case, you have 21 flights from London to New York, each with a space for Mr Smith who never turns up and they have to refund his fare.
4. You're right, I haven't addressed that point. It's a regulatory issue. Who would regulate it? The Department for Transport in the UK? The EU? NATO? IATA? (Probably the latter. IATA. Owned by the airlines. And whose side might they come down on?).
Also, cui bono? How is it to airlines', airports', cities' or travel agents' benefit to add even more, costly, difficult "rules"? The passengers, of course. But look at the macro economics: which passenger would ever decide against flying simply because there's a risk that they might be bumped off the flight? Answer: too few for the airlines to worry about, by definition. It is only ever a significant risk on very popular routes, so the airlines don't really worry that Mr Smith isn't going to fly, because they've already banked the money from 500 other Mr Smiths, thereby just covering the cost of the flight and a tiny profit.
Being bumped off a flight is a first world problem. That doesn't mean it's not a seriously irritating, frustrating situation for someone to find themselves in. But it's very rare. It hasn't happened to me; it hasn't happened to anyone in my family (except for my cousin, who is a pilot and they don't pay for the flight anyway!); but, more importantly than that, I don't know of anyone for whom it's happened more than once. It's very rare and there are several steps people can take to ensure it's less likely it will happen to them. (And not all of them cost money).
I am so sorry about the situation with your Mum. That must have been a terrible day for you. You're right that the most likely passengers to fall victim of being bumped are most likely to be those that have paid the least for the flight. But that's a commercial reality - if any customer is going to be treated less well than others, it's the customer that's the least valuable to the airline, ie the infrequent passenger who pays the lowest amount.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
If things were as bad and cut throat as they make out they would get out of the business. I'm always a little sceptical when I read about either profit or loss but I do understand they are in business to stay in business.
All within the last 5 years. Go beyond UK and go a little further back and the list is long, including flag carriers such as Alitalia, Swissair, Pan Am, TWA, etc etc.)
Below is Virgin Atlantic's profitability by year. Even when they made a profit, the margins are paper thin. Any material incident outside their control (war, ash cloud) and they are knackered.
As the old saying goes " If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline".
Thanks, @Chizz. You make some good points again - and re my Mum, of course on the day, I was very grateful that both airports, and the airline, and the London trains all worked at the highest professional level on the day, and that accessing a flight in an emergency is possible for ordinary people in a an efficient transparent way, which was not the case before internet booking became the norm.
Your answer to point 3 illustrates the genuine problem airlines face. But then they should get together and agree steps to dis-incentivise this behaviour. They will be reluctant to of course because they are taking on their highest paying customers; however they are dumping on other passengers in order to deal with the problem caused by people up-front. And btw the people up-front hardly ever pay for themselves. They indeed might be in economy when they go on hols with the family. It's corporate profligacy rather than individual twattishness we are addressing here. Corporate CFOs may well welcome such steps.
Re the first two points, I'm sorry but I have to say that I don't think you've cracked it. It still seems to me that @SomervilleAddick is right. They have set an over-sell limit for themselves and they know when they've reached it. So, as you concede in point 2, do the travel agents. So that info is shareable.
I'm not at all keen on this: You have to decide, however, whether this is merely marketing practice. (Example, if I were the airline, and I had 50 seats priced at £500, I would tell customers that I only had three at that price. Marketing, innit?)
No mate. It is not marketing, at least by normal professional standards. It's the equivalent of a retail display of a special deal on Jaffa Cakes with a big sign saying "offer ends in three days time" and then you find it goes on another two weeks. And since Ryanair can fly you places for the price of about three boxes of Jaff Cakes, don't tell me the comparision is invalid. The correct word for it does begin with "M". Misrepresentation. (Maybe @SporadicAddick may wish to challenge me on that. )
Your question on the issue re who would regulate, well, the compensation scheme was brought in by the European Commissioner for transport. As you know the EU cannot force individual member States to follow even a directive, but in this case all Member States including the UK at the time thought it wasa good diea and adopted it. And the UK has not put it on Rees-Mogg's bonfire. So I think this tightening would be eminently do-able, although we need to get rid of the current Transport Commissioner who is useless, and replace her with someone with a better grip on international travel issues (rail as well as air).
By Chizz's admission, the example is massively over stated for effect.
I travel a lot for work (probably 30 / 40 flights a year) and I have never been bumped off. When people are bumped (and it may be operational (e.g. different aircraft type) as much as maximising load factor) there is a process in place (UK261). Your sister in law clearly wasn't served well by Iberia, but when you book, when you check in and on all of your documentation its very clear in terms of passenger rights - I'm not sure how your SIL can have been left high and dry as she was. The process is massively regulated and whilst I get the "airlines should do this" argument, its neither commercially, technically nor operationally viable (nor indeed is it required).
It seems to me the problem is the conflict between "flexible /open" tickets which are effectively valid on any flight and the sort of tickets most people use for holidays where you are booking a seat on a specific flight.
I occasionally used to travel from Toronto to Montreal for business and virtually all passengers seemed to reserve a return seat on the final flight of the day. But nearly everyone actually turned up much earlier and simply boarded the first plane available. The final flight would usually depart half empty although it was probably 300% overbooked!
I must admit I prefer sites like Ryanair or Easyjet where I can see individual seats being reserved and I can download a boarding pass long before the flight departs.
Comments
- the max £520 statutory - according to MSE we clearly qualify
- amount equivalent to the refreshments they should have provided her
- the hotel bill
- transport to and from hotel
- transport to LHR
I really think there should be something else too, but can’t think of anything. Not sure if my brother’s extra journey to/from LGW to help her out would fly. Maybe I’ll just channel my inner Peaky Blinders Alfie and add another £100 for being a bunch of *****😉
Hopefully its another thread that will help others in future. Unfortunately this sort of nonsense isn’t going to go away.
But on that subject one thing I can say is never ever use booking.com for flights even if you use them for hotels. My wife found that out recently and we discovered a whole world of pain out there. Fortunately she was only in Amsterdam. Booking.com thinks its travel’s answer to Amazon but it doesnt want to invest in even the basics of service that goes with the sector.
I recognise that there's an environmental issue here, it's in nobody's interest to have planes flying around with empty seats (unless you're the lucky person in the adjacent seat). Surely though in these days of digital bookings, it's not going to be too difficult to introduce a system where people are informed of their ticket status immediately before booking. I think there should be a message along these lines, 'There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. It seems to me that the only reason this doesn't happen is because the airlines are taking the piss.
If these overflow tickets aren't popular, and it's easy to see why they might not be, then it's up to the airlines to incentivise them.
Back to my initial point though, how on earth have they got the right to sell something that they've already sold?
Airline tickets are generally sold by travel agencies, both offline (eg High Street holiday shops) and online (booking.com). None of these outlets would be in business if they weren't able to sell seats on every airline, on every route. Obviously, if you're a travel agent and your competitor is able to sell seats on more airlines than you are, you go bust. So, you demand the ability to sell seats on every airline. That means airlines need connections to more than 200,000 travel agencies around the world; all with real-time access to the latest inventory and flight availability (ie how many seats are still available in each plane).
Once you have your 200,000 travel agents connected, you have to make sure they're connected to all the airlines. That's several hundred. Because (as above) if you walk into a travel agent who can't sell you a seat on Garuda, you won't bother visiting them when you next want to fly on TAP.
You also need to display the "availability" on every class. And, how many classes are there? Not just the normal three or First, Business and Economy (people confuse "cabin" with "class") but 26. Each cabin is sub-divided into letters representing the Fare Basis, from A-Z, where, for example, A, F, P and R are within the First class cabin, C, D, I, J and Z are in Business class, and so on. Each of the 26 classes will have a limit on the availability. So, there may be 3 seats available in C, 2 in D, 8 in I, 6 in J and 2 in Z, and so on. To ensure you have a full picture of the availability of any flight, you need to know the availability in every one of the 26 classes on every flight, every day, in real time.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Each class will have a price for the fare. So, from London to New York, C might be £5,000, D might be £4,500, I might be £4,000, J might be £3,500 and Z might be £3,000. Each of these classes might have restrictions on whether the fare is fully or partially refundable and what bundled products you would get with that fare (eg 20kg of baggage hold; free seat selection; fast track security access, etc, etc almost ad infinitum).
So, to tell someone how many seats are available, you need to interrogate a central database, in real time, of fares, availability and pricing, to determine exactly how many seats are available in each class, and at what price. And, as you have 200,000 other agents potentially looking to search for and book seats, you have to get the information very, very quickly, while it's still there. To do that, compromises are made in the data which is sent between the airlines, the central reservation systems and the travel agents, so that as little information needs to be shared at any time. One of the compromises is that the airlines only provide a single digit to tell you how many seats are available in each class, from 0-9. So, if your display tells you C8, you know there are eight seats available in C class, at that time, on that flight. If it says C0, then that class is sold out. But if it says C9, it tells you that at least 9 seats are available (could be 9, could be many more).
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines change the price of fares in every class, on every flight, as often as they want to, in real time. These are then updated several times an hour.
And, if an airline is selling a lot of C class, but not many D or I class, they will adjust the availability of those classes, again in real time. Every class, every priced fare, in every cabin, on every flight, from and to every airport in the world, are all updated, up to hundreds of times an hour.
(To give an idea, many years ago, British Airways ran a long, expensive and thorough process, so that, moving forward, they would only - ONLY! - update a million fares a day).
The computing power used to facilitate this ultra-fast exchange of airline availability and fares information is enormous. There are three (main) companies who handle this task, with Data Centres around the world. One of these Data Centres is based in the United States and is the largest non-military Data Centre in the world.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple.
Airlines are very, very marginally profitable. They make very little profit on each seat. Example, when Ryan Air initially passed the milestone of one million passengers a year between Dublin and London, they also reached one million pounds profit on that route. That means each passenger on a flight from Dublin, over the water, to London created just a quid in profit for the airline.
Many airlines overbook. And, almost unbelievably, many passengers book and pay for flights, but don't show up. A product was developed to help travel agents determine which of the thousands of tickets they sell each month had not been "flown" (ie the ticket was bought, but the passenger didn't fly). The product enabled the travel agent to get some form of refund, even if the full fare wasn't refundable (eg they could get the tax back). However, airlines didn't like that product. Why not? Because their overbooking was often in the region of 4% of passengers. (Not the worst possible scenario, that's a handful of passengers on an A380). But those airlines would be trading at a profit margin of less than 4%. So, if all those tickets were to be refunded, they'd go bust.
It would be extraordinarily complicated to put together a message that says, There are 200 seats on this plane. You are about to purchase ticket 201. Past history of this flight suggests that there is a XX% chance of you being able to travel as ticketed. If however we are oversubscribed we will ensure that you get the next available seats for this journey and will compensate you by...'. Who would pay for it? (Not the airlines - it's not in their interest). How reliable would it be? (Not reliable at all, because no-one knows which of the 200 tickets will ever be used, refunded or delayed for a later flight or date). Would the travel agent be happy to put themselves at risk of providing information that turns out not to have been an accurate prediction? (No).
If airlines overbook by 4%, that gives the average passenger a one-in-25 flights chance of being an overbooked ticket. But there are very roughly 4% no shows. So that one-in-25 is more likely to be one-in-50 or one-in-100 flights. How long does it take a passenger to build up 100 flights? Several years, I would guess. Unless you're a frequent business traveller - but these, of course, have protections and insurance in place should that ever happen, in the form of their frequent flyer memberships.
Of all the things that airlines, reservation systems and travel agents need to fix with technology solutions, this warning system is well down the list.
Having spent several hundred million implementing the above for no real benefit, on the day of the flight, for operational reasons, the aircraft type is changed from a 737 Max 8 to a 737 Max 9, 15 people are bumped off and so we are back to square 1.
With inflation it should be twice that now.
Was BA.
Of course as a rail nerd I have to tip my hat to your airline nerd tour de force.
For all the comprehensive nature of your insight into the ticket sales system (and it is valuable) I am left with some nagging questions.
1. How do you respond to @SomervilleAddick opening point above?
2. If displaying real time info of availability to buyers, corporate or private, is so difficult, how come I invariably see the legend "Only x seats available at this price" whenever I first open up ba.com and choose a flight/day of flight and see the the various offers?
3. Could you remind us why the airlines have not received payment in full for the no-shows? Is it because they are mainly fully flexible fares? Isn't there a problem rather of biz people ( a mate of mine boasts of this) who have say three flights from Vienna back to London booked on the grounds they don't know what time their meeting finishes, so they cancel two of the three late in the day? If so, there could be tighter cancellation clauses to try and deter that, no?
4. You have not addressed @Stig 's point that airlines should make a clear, unambiguous commitment that in the event of an over-booked flight they will always (under threat of regulatory punishment) seek volunteers to offload with generous compensation offers; and that all passengers who are forcibly offloaded are properly assisted by groundstaff with refreshments, assistance with re-scheduling asap, and with overnight accommodation (or as many nights as it takes). The low-costs, led by Ryanair, will hate it because that will mean more staff, properly trained. Good. Let's get this industry back to some basic levels of human decency, let alone service, even if it means the German Addicks have to pay £30 rather than £20 to get to the Valley from Bremen.
And finally, while I have never been off-loaded, I have certainly been on flights where it was happening, and I have never been that frequent a traveller (max around 16/year). It is a real issue and most likely to afflict people who bought the cheapest fare because they cannot afford more. My SIL was left completely stranded. No refreshments. No help with re-booking. No help with accommodation. Not even an unambiguous explanation of why another airline than the one she bought from was responsible for her. She was lucky that she was in London, my brother was able to come down and support her, and he in turn had his stroppy brother on WhatsApp (and he had @SporadicAddick on CL
It'd be an absolute breeze to code a system that could do something Stig has suggested. Nothing complicated about it, just not wanted.
But not a reason to necessarily to change the whole business model.
If things were as bad and cut throat as they make out they would get out of the business. I'm always a little sceptical when I read about either profit or loss but I do understand they are in business to stay in business.
2. You will see "only x seats available at this price" on ba.com for two reasons. First, because that price-point will be on a fare with limited availability in one specific class, in a specific cabin. Example: on BA, the economy cabin ("world traveller") has 13 classes, Y, B, H, K, M, L, V, S, N, Q, O, G and P. BA will likely make a limited number of seats available in one of those classes, at a nice, low, round-figure number, for example, they might make 8 seats available in Y class on a Heathrow-Barbados flight for £500 plus taxes. So, as soon as the flight goes on sale (maybe 12 months before the flight) they can say "only 8 seats available at £500". They can then simply "keep an eye" on the number of Y class sales they make and update ba.com accordingly. (By this method, all travel agents (connected to appropriate GDS systems) will also be able to see how many seats are available in Y class). If they find themselves overselling this class (ie Y class), they could offer other classes in the same cabin (ie B, H, K, M, L, V, S, N, Q, O, G or P). Or they might choose not to. (Of course, the airline could offer only some of the Y class fares at the lowest price; in other words, they might have 20 Y class fares, but only four priced at £500, with the rest at £700). (For some people this gets quite confusing, because the word "fare" has nothing to do with the amount of money you pay: you might have the same fare at very different prices).
The second reason is much simpler. They give you a warning that there are "only" a few seats at a certain price available in order to encourage you to buy now. You have to decide, however, whether this is merely marketing practice. (Example, if I were the airline, and I had 50 seats priced at £500, I would tell customers that I only had three at that price. Marketing, innit?)
3. This is a very common issue with high-value business passengers. The Vienna-London route will "suffer" from this less than other routes. For example, the most lucrative route in the world is London-New York (may have been surpassed since the pandemic, however, so don't quote me!). On that route, it's not uncommon for a business traveller to book a fully flexible fare on every flight from New York to London. There are 22 daily flights, ranging from BA, Virgin, Delta, United and American to Aer Lingus, JetBlue, Turkish and others. That person might book on every single flight that day, finish his meetings, get a cab to the airport, look at the departure board and just jump on the next flight to London (much as you might jump on the next train to Ramsgate from Charing Cross). He can then cancel (technically, "refund") the other 21 bookings he's made for that day, getting a full refund from each. Even after the planes have left. So, in this (hugely exaggerated) case, you have 21 flights from London to New York, each with a space for Mr Smith who never turns up and they have to refund his fare.
4. You're right, I haven't addressed that point. It's a regulatory issue. Who would regulate it? The Department for Transport in the UK? The EU? NATO? IATA? (Probably the latter. IATA. Owned by the airlines. And whose side might they come down on?).
Also, cui bono? How is it to airlines', airports', cities' or travel agents' benefit to add even more, costly, difficult "rules"? The passengers, of course. But look at the macro economics: which passenger would ever decide against flying simply because there's a risk that they might be bumped off the flight? Answer: too few for the airlines to worry about, by definition. It is only ever a significant risk on very popular routes, so the airlines don't really worry that Mr Smith isn't going to fly, because they've already banked the money from 500 other Mr Smiths, thereby just covering the cost of the flight and a tiny profit.
Being bumped off a flight is a first world problem. That doesn't mean it's not a seriously irritating, frustrating situation for someone to find themselves in. But it's very rare. It hasn't happened to me; it hasn't happened to anyone in my family (except for my cousin, who is a pilot and they don't pay for the flight anyway!); but, more importantly than that, I don't know of anyone for whom it's happened more than once. It's very rare and there are several steps people can take to ensure it's less likely it will happen to them. (And not all of them cost money).
I am so sorry about the situation with your Mum. That must have been a terrible day for you. You're right that the most likely passengers to fall victim of being bumped are most likely to be those that have paid the least for the flight. But that's a commercial reality - if any customer is going to be treated less well than others, it's the customer that's the least valuable to the airline, ie the infrequent passenger who pays the lowest amount.
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/scheduled-flights-cancelled-after-embattled-airline-flybe-ceases-trading-b1056278.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-thomas-cook-collapses-enters-20147860
https://www.ft.com/content/a0954da5-cda5-3d4d-b768-6db68afc3bf4
All within the last 5 years. Go beyond UK and go a little further back and the list is long, including flag carriers such as Alitalia, Swissair, Pan Am, TWA, etc etc.)
Below is Virgin Atlantic's profitability by year. Even when they made a profit, the margins are paper thin. Any material incident outside their control (war, ash cloud) and they are knackered.
As the old saying goes " If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline".
Your answer to point 3 illustrates the genuine problem airlines face. But then they should get together and agree steps to dis-incentivise this behaviour. They will be reluctant to of course because they are taking on their highest paying customers; however they are dumping on other passengers in order to deal with the problem caused by people up-front. And btw the people up-front hardly ever pay for themselves. They indeed might be in economy when they go on hols with the family. It's corporate profligacy rather than individual twattishness we are addressing here. Corporate CFOs may well welcome such steps.
Re the first two points, I'm sorry but I have to say that I don't think you've cracked it. It still seems to me that @SomervilleAddick is right. They have set an over-sell limit for themselves and they know when they've reached it. So, as you concede in point 2, do the travel agents. So that info is shareable.
I'm not at all keen on this:
You have to decide, however, whether this is merely marketing practice. (Example, if I were the airline, and I had 50 seats priced at £500, I would tell customers that I only had three at that price. Marketing, innit?)
No mate. It is not marketing, at least by normal professional standards. It's the equivalent of a retail display of a special deal on Jaffa Cakes with a big sign saying "offer ends in three days time" and then you find it goes on another two weeks. And since Ryanair can fly you places for the price of about three boxes of Jaff Cakes, don't tell me the comparision is invalid. The correct word for it does begin with "M". Misrepresentation. (Maybe @SporadicAddick may wish to challenge me on that.
Your question on the issue re who would regulate, well, the compensation scheme was brought in by the European Commissioner for transport. As you know the EU cannot force individual member States to follow even a directive, but in this case all Member States including the UK at the time thought it wasa good diea and adopted it. And the UK has not put it on Rees-Mogg's bonfire. So I think this tightening would be eminently do-able, although we need to get rid of the current Transport Commissioner who is useless, and replace her with someone with a better grip on international travel issues (rail as well as air).
I travel a lot for work (probably 30 / 40 flights a year) and I have never been bumped off. When people are bumped (and it may be operational (e.g. different aircraft type) as much as maximising load factor) there is a process in place (UK261). Your sister in law clearly wasn't served well by Iberia, but when you book, when you check in and on all of your documentation its very clear in terms of passenger rights - I'm not sure how your SIL can have been left high and dry as she was. The process is massively regulated and whilst I get the "airlines should do this" argument, its neither commercially, technically nor operationally viable (nor indeed is it required).
I occasionally used to travel from Toronto to Montreal for business and virtually all passengers seemed to reserve a return seat on the final flight of the day. But nearly everyone actually turned up much earlier and simply boarded the first plane available. The final flight would usually depart half empty although it was probably 300% overbooked!
I must admit I prefer sites like Ryanair or Easyjet where I can see individual seats being reserved and I can download a boarding pass long before the flight departs.