R E R O U T E D

Data shows passengers being bumped off of flights is on the decline after United scandal

By Grace Manthey

Overall rates of bumped passengers on decline

When security officers dragged a United Airlines passenger kicking and screaming off a flight in 2017, it turned into what some called a “PR nightmare.”

Following the scandal, an Annenberg Media analysis of public quarterly reports from the U.S. Department of Transportation showed a decline in passengers being bumped off of flights.

After the scandal, the company’s stocks dropped to a low of negative 4.3 percent two days into the crisis, according to Business Insider. It worked out to be about a $1 billion loss.

So, United announced it would start bumping fewer and fewer passengers, and other airlines seemed to follow suit.

Because even though the rate of bumping passengers wasn’t large to begin with, the consequences for doing it wrong certainly were.

Hover over the pie chart for more

Voluntary

vs

involuntary

bumping of passengers

6%

94%

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation

Fewer than four out of 100,000 passengers were bumped involuntarily in the last two years, contributing to only six percent of the total number of passengers that were denied boarding, according the DOT data.

And the last two years saw about a 50 percent decrease in the rates of passengers denied boarding on flights, for passengers that both volunteered to be bumped and those that did not. For just involuntary bumping alone, rates decreased by about 63 percent.

According to Matthew Trujillo, an information tech support specialist at Alaska Airlines, airlines across the board implemented changes following the United scandal, like increased training regarding bumping and overselling regulations.

Even though the number of overbooked flights isn’t relatively large, overbooking flights is no accident. It’s all driven by the airline’s bottom line.

Airlines study flights from the year before to determine how many people typically don’t show up, said Trujillo.

From there, the airlines can decide how many seats they can oversell by, but they make money from all the people who buy the tickets, including the ones that are predicted not to show up.

For example, if experts predict that two passengers will not show up for a flight, they cap flights at oversold by two. Assuming their prediction is right, the flight fills up. Then, two people don’t show up, and "boom! You’re good to go with a full flight!" said Trujillo.

Smaller airlines have fewer flights per day, so they usually have fewer volunteers to bump to the next flight, which could be hours after their original one, said Trujillo.

That could account for higher involuntary rates for Frontier, Jetblue and Spirit.

Rates of involuntary bumping over the past two years

Rates of involuntary bumping over the past two years

Delta airlines has a lower rate of bumping passengers involuntarily off of flights because it’s one of the largest airlines with nearly 435 million passengers per quarter.

As a larger airline, it has a lower rate of involuntary bumping.

Rates of involuntary bumping over the past two years

But it has a high rate of bumping passengers overall. Most of them are voluntary. Trujillo said that because larger airlines have more flights, passengers are more likely to volunteer to be bumped to a later flight.

Rates of involuntary and voluntary bumping over the past two years

Airlines don’t allow all flights to be overbooked. Flights to destination areas like Hawaii are almost never oversold. Passengers are usually going on vacation, so those flights rarely have no-shows, and airlines want to make sure that passengers going on vacation have as smooth an experience as possible. This explains why rates of voluntary and involuntary bumping on Hawaiian Airlines are so low in comparison to other airlines, said Trujillo.

Rates of involuntary and voluntary bumping over the past two years

"There’s always someone who is angry," Trujillo said about telling passengers they will be bumped off of their flight. "But usually when we give them a check for $1,500 they’re like 'okay!' and they’re on their way."

While airlines are probably not going to give up overbooking flights anytime soon, they do seem to be under consumer pressure to better handle the process.

Rates of involuntary and voluntary bumping over the past two years

For example, passengers who voluntarily give up their seat are entitled to compensation such as flight vouchers, reduced tickets, or even cash, according to the DOT.

Passengers are free to negotiate the compensation. Since airlines make extra money on the passengers that don’t show up, they can afford to pay the cost of the ticket plus a percentage, which is different depending on the flight, said Trujillo.

When it comes to denying boarding to passengers involuntarily, airlines are required to provide compensation (with exceptions), and it’s up to individual airlines to decide the process with which they pick the passengers. At Alaska, when passengers book through a third-party site such as Travelocity or Kayak, they often don’t have a seat right away, so they are often the first to be bumped, said Trujillo. It also could depend on the time a passenger checked in, or his or her frequent flyer status, according to DOT regulations.

And the increased training for gate agents on how to deal with overbookings and communicate with passengers about the process that Trujillo discussed seems to have settled some of the PR problems of the last couple of years, he said.

But it’s not always a problem to be bumped from a flight. Sometimes it can be lucky for passengers.

Rhonda Zacharias was on her way to St. Louis from LAX on Trans World Airlines in 1987. She was involuntarily bumped from her flight and the airline sent her to its lounge to wait.

The elevator doors to the lounge opened and in front of her was the band Bon Jovi, who she saw in concert the night before.

"I was speechless, they were hilarious," she said in an interview over text. "And that’s where my Jovi obsession began."

Another passenger, Frederick Radcliffe, was flying from Sacramento to Orlando for a family vacation on Delta a few years ago. He had a layover in both Denver and Atlanta. In Denver, the gate agents called for volunteers and offered a $400 travel voucher. When he volunteered, the gate agents found him a non-stop flight from Denver to Orlando that actually ended up getting him to his destination faster.

The gate agent "was almost as stocked to switch the flight as I was," Radcliffe said in an email. "Surprisingly my luggage made it too! Everyone was professional and appreciative about my flexibility while traveling."

And while not every story ends like these two when it comes to oversold flights, airlines seem to be getting better at letting people know their rights, something that experts say airline passengers should start to do on their own.

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BY GRACE MANTHEY