Airlines pushing back on talk of banning overbooking flights

Associated Press

DALLAS

With the federal government and a Senate committee looking into the dragging of a man off a United Express flight, the airline industry is beginning to speak up against any effort to bar them from overselling flights.

The CEO of Delta Air Lines called overbooking “a valid business process.”

“I don’t think we need to have additional legislation to try to control how the airlines run their businesses,” Ed Bastian said Wednesday. “The key is managing it before you get to the boarding process.”

Federal rules allow airlines to sell more tickets than they have seats, and airlines do it routinely because they assume some passengers won’t show up.

The practice lets airlines keep fares low while managing the rate of no-shows on any particular route, said Vaughn Jennings, spokesman for Airlines for America, which represents most of the big U.S. carriers. He said that plane seats are perishable commodities – once the door has been closed, seats on a flight can’t be sold and lose all value.

Bumping is rare – only about one in 16,000 passengers got bumped last year, the lowest rate since at least the mid-1990s. But it angers and frustrates customers who see their travel plans wrecked in an instant.

Bumping is not limited to flights that are oversold. It can happen if the plane is overweight or air marshals need a seat. Sometimes it happens because the airline needs room for employees who are commuting to work on another flight – that’s what happened Sunday on United Express.

Flight 3411 was sold out – passengers had boarded, and every seat was filled –when the airline discovered that it needed to find room for four crew members.