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Which airlines bump the most passengers?
I understand that airlines oversell seats as a hedge against passengers that cancel or do not show up to flights. But when you think about it, the concept of overselling -- that is, when that announcement comes over the PA at the gate feigning a degree of surprise that a "flight has been overbooked" -- is kind of ridiculous. I mean, an aircraft has X number of seats, and thus it sells a maximum of X number of tickets. Easy.Yet overselling is the leading cause for passengers getting bumped from flights -- and tens of thousands of passengers are bumped, either voluntarily or involuntarily, every year.
What's the airline on which you're most likely to get bumped? That would be Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which bumped 22,982 people last year voluntarily (and another 3,610 involuntarily), according to a recently released report from the US Department of Transportation's Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings.
Here's how 18 domestic airlines rank in terms of bumping passengers. JetBlue is clearly the best of the bunch. What's its secret?
If you wonder why some farther down the list have larger bump numbers than others at the list's top, the OAEP ranks the airlines in terms of bumps per 10,000 passengers. Atlantic Southwest had 9.3 million passengers last year, for a bump rate of 3.89 passengers for every 10,000. US Airways had a lot more bumps, but also 82.2 million passengers last year.
- Atlantic Southwest Airlines (22,982 voluntary / 3,610 involuntary)
- Comair (13,461 / 1,909)
- American Eagle (7,103 / 2,184)
- Pinnacle Airlines (6,572 / 1,540)
- Delta (62,243 / 10,403)
- Continental (37,825 / 5,671)
- Mesa Airlines (25,048 / 1,355)
- US Airways (85,001 / 7,205)
- SkyWest (34,155 / 2,090)
- United (92,624 / 6,812)
- Southwest (73,403 / 10,362)
- Frontier (4,436 / 983)
- Northwest (48,473 / 3,027)
- American Airlines (56,649 / 5,568)
- Alaska Airlines (8,128 / 983)
- AirTran (8,128 / 834)
- Hawaiian Airlines (317 / 54)
- JetBlue (58 / 22)
Filed under: Airlines
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Malaycobra Apr 23rd 2009 1:47PM
The concept of overbooking annoys me. If every seat is paid in advance, how do the airline lose if the person doesn't show up? In fact they make money, as they get paid but don't have the fuel cost for passenger and baggage weight.
The trick is not to give refunds to no-shows.
If they have empty seats at time of boarding, just allow them to go to standby passengers. With the reduction in the number of planes in the air, it always seems there are plenty of standbys for most flights these days.
Gatling Apr 23rd 2009 2:32PM
Now we need to take this list and compare it to the load factors to really see who is doing good. JetBlues load factors could be 50 percent where as ASA could be 98 percent. Comparing the two you would then be able to see who is maximizing revenue with the least disruption.
Hank Apr 23rd 2009 3:01PM
Jet Blue only overbooks for deadheading crew members, that's why their numbers are so low.
johnmc Apr 23rd 2009 10:11PM
There are a lot of feeder/regional airlines in the top 10. These airlines are at the mercy of whichever airline is selling the tickets (Delta/United/US Airways etc.) and are more likely to be weight restricted in their smaller planes.