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Comment by mk_chan | Hacker News Reader

I was stuck in exactly this situation with my father last year going from UK to Portugal via Heathrow. Hundreds of people past immigration counters joined the lines to get back into the country, stuck in there for about 5 hours in an extremely congested, slow moving crowd. Some of the younger people were so outraged they took to Twitter and Instagram and began a campaign to refund and sue. About 3 hours in, BA decided it might be prudent to provide water bottles and a pack of biscuits to their customers. It was a pretty grueling experience TBH.

An exact repeat of this situation makes it seem like such failures are becoming routine for BA.

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> An exact repeat of this situation makes it seem like such failures are becoming routine for BA.

An even more 'routine' practice is overbooking. In my latest trip to Warsaw (using Polish Airlines / LOT) they overbooked by 10 people in a plane with less than 100.

We bought the tickets one month in advance and had reserved seats, but it seems until you check in you are not guaranteed to be on board. Truly disgusting practice.

What's "disgusting" about resource allocation?

If the airlines were just required to never do this, they'd obviously have to increase ticket prices, the prices today factor in the reality that they overbook because it works fine most of the time. Ban it and the prices rise because the costs don't change but the number of tickets sold falls.

If you're OK with higher ticket prices, you can already buy a more expensive ticket, which will mean you're not going to get bumped (because involuntarily bumping people on a more expensive ticket costs them more money) so you can already experience this alternate world today.

What you're describing might be acceptable if the airline were transparent about it: "This 90 person flight will be overbooked by up to 10 people. Based on data over the last 12 months, there is a 5% chance one or more people in your party of 4 will be involuntarily forced to wait for the next flight, which is 3 hours later. That would lead you to missing your connecting flight, resulting in a total delay of at least 9 hours for your trip."

Without this level of transparency it is impossible for me, as a single consumer, to make an informed decision about my purchase, because perhaps the most important part of the product--the likelihood of arriving at my destination at the time advertised on the website--is opaque to me.

What's worse, there is a moral hazard here, as the airline is incentivized to overbook by as much as possible to eliminate any possibility of an empty seat on the flight, while they are not legally obligated to inform customers of the degree to which they are overbooking. The market only works when information is free and complete. When an airline overbooks by such a large margin, it's a breakdown in the air travel market.

You either don't understand how involuntarily bumping passengers works, or you don't understand what moral hazard is, or perhaps both.

The airline has to compensate bumped passengers as well as rearranging their flight. It's the same as cancelling the flight as far as that passenger is concerned. As you see in other threads the EU requires up to €600 per passenger monetary compensation as well as any other needs. Far from having an incentive to overbook "as much as possible" this means airlines are probably going to lose money on a flight that involuntarily bumps passengers, because the margins in budget air travel are slim.

Legally they have to, yes -- but BA's tactic for avoiding this is for all the desk staff to mysteriously go on an extended break when a delayed flight arrives...

You call the helpdesk to be told "speak to airport staff at the BA desk".

... see above. :)

I've never heard overbooking announcements with discount airlines (easyJet, Ryanair). I wonder if they just don't overbook or somehow handle the situation better.

I flew to an easyJet destination weekly for the bigger part of a year. Heard overbooking announcements at least every other week.

It's just less of a problem for them to find a passenger willing to take a later flight voluntarily. They offer 300 to 500 euro (usually in flight credits), which to an audience that paid around 50 euro for their ticket is a great deal. Especially if it's a holiday trip where they don't mind as much arriving a few hours later.

They (generally) don't overbook. Since their tickets are (generally) not refundable, they get paid even if you don't show up.

We were scheduled to fly from Edinburgh to London last year, when the previous meltdown happened.

Luckily we got notified well before anyone got to the airport and managed to book train tickets instead.

did you get compensated?

Because he was in EU he has right for compansation.

Specifically, €400 per person assuming they were flying to Lisbon: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right... . If OP hasn’t claimed already, then it’d probably be a good idea to do that before October 31st though.

BA are required to inform them of the compensation they're entitled to (and provide duty of care)

Remember, this is the same airline that just placed a huge order for Boeing 777MAX airplanes. It's obviously run by incompetents, so I'd stay far away.

What's wrong with the 777 Max planes?

He meant 737 Max (order was about 200 jets).

https://simpleflying.com/british-airways-737-max/

737 I think you mean.

Definitely dodgy, Airbus were not even invited to tender.

They said the reason Airbus was not invited for the offer was because they are always months late with their delivery

Well they have a huge backlog for the A321Neo... for obvious reasons!

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