Costlier to have empty seats on flights than to overbook and compensate
In the bargain of not letting flight seats go unfilled airlines overbook passengers per flight. Inconvenience to passengers is overlooked as cost to company on empty seats stacks up to a high amount.
Stranded at an airport after being asked to deboard or denied boarding on domestic planes after owning a confirmed boarding pass was the case for 2,988 passengers at Indian airports in February alone.
This was the highest reported so far of domestic fliers that were denied boarding, as per the as per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data as on 18 March 2017.
The number was 2,598 in January this year and has been increasing since November 2016 when passengers denied boarding amounted to 2,100.
From a wedding party of 80 holding the whole of Jet Airways flight 9W 7083 to Bhopal ransom if they threatened to remove some of them in December to an Asian man forcibly removed from United Airlines 3411 flight on Sunday.
"In India, airlines are permitted to sell seats up to 15% above their seating capacity," Aditya Jaiswal, research analyst Stewart & Mackertich said.
United Airlines headquartered in Chicago like other Indian domestic carriers -- Jet Airways and Air India admitted to overbooking seats beyond the norms of the regulator.
This is done so as to ensure that the plane does not have any empty seats on account of ‘no shows’ or late comers.
“To reduce the possibility of flight departing with empty seats, airlines generally overbook flights to a limited extent. In case of overbooking on a particular flight, there may be circumstances on a particular day when more passengers report for the flight than the number of seats available. Under such conditions, airline may deny boarding to you while you may be holding confirmed bookings for travel on the flight and reported for the flight well within the specified time ahead of the departure of the flight,” DGCA guidelines read.
Why most of your flights were delayed in December
Image Source: DGCA report
While SpiceJet said, “No comment” to Zeebiz queries, IndiGo, Jet Airways and Air India did not reply before this article was published.
In June 2015, Jet Airways spokesperson said, “The airline uses sophisticated algorithms to predict cancellation and no-show pattern on specific routes and overbooks some flights by a small number accordingly,” a report by The Hindu read.
Holding a valid boarding pass and checking-in on time has failed to stop airlines from denying boarding to passengers. Inconvenience to passengers is overlooked as cost to company on empty seats stacks up to a high amount.
“A chunk of the ‘denied boarding’ cases are reported by Air India and Jet Airways, while Indigo, the market leader does not overbooks flights,” Stewart & Mackertich's Jaiswal added.
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