The Awful Truth About Airline Overbooking

Wednesday, April 19 2006 @ 11:08 AM EDT Contributed by: Admin Views: 4,295 You can read below about how we were denied boarding on a US Airways/America West codeshare flight. What's more onerous is that it happens a lot. There are a few things you can do about this, but there needs to be changes. Airlines can't be sued for fraud for accepting your money and giving you a "reservation". I always thought that the definition of fraud was taking money for something that's not what you expected to receive. Dictionary.Com defines fraud this way: "A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain." Instead, airlines are allowed to take your money, then deny you what you bought. They need only try to get people to give up a seat they already hold with the promise that they'll get something in return. In practice, I've seen United Airlines offer roundtrip tickets to anywhere in the world (this for an International overbooking event) plus up to $1000 in cash compensation, plus an overnight hotel room plus food, and transportation-- in the same seating class of service. What US Airways/America West (then United) in Las Vegas offered was a 48-state roundtrip ticket. That's it. No cash, and no increasing incentives until seats were freed. That's their minimum obligation. You can refuse compensation or the ticket if you're denied boarding (and certain other rules are met), then sue. This litigation will, if executed as a civil lawsuit (and not a small claims court action, where the denial probably puts the jurisdiction where you were denied boarding rather than your home region where you bought the ticket) take years, and cost you a lot of money. You might win. You might not. And so litigation is an awful sort of choice to make unless you've got lots of time, an attorney on retainer, and can afford to lose. And so, this is no solution to the problem at all; it's fraud, you're up against a wall, and the number of suits filed are probably a handful. Instead, these suits need to be tracked. Few people will be tempted to take anything other than a cash settlement, or the prospect of a free trip, or both. The inconvenience of a denied boarding is huge, and a horrendous experience. Perhaps there's a better way. The first would be to stop denying that it's fraud to overbook. Corporate profits are an important thing, but so are passenger plans. Compensation needs to be made to make this experience tenable, or indeed prevent it altogether-- better still.

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