Bumped at the check-in

By STEVE HART

You arrive to check in for your flight to find the plane is full. You're forced to wait for the next one, offered a night at a hotel or a complimentary bite to eat. You may even get some cash.

For some travellers, the delay isn't a problem. For others, perhaps those on business, it's untenable.

The reasons given range from the aircraft being taken out of service to connections arriving late. But the problem of being bumped - being the victim of a denied boarding, as the industry calls it - is often down to airlines overbooking. All airlines take bookings from more people than they could possibly carry.

Overbooking, says one industry specialist, dates back almost as far as air travel itself. Airlines knowingly sell about 20 per cent more tickets for any given flight than the plane can hold.

Travel agents have no real way of knowing if a ticket they are selling is over and above the capacity of the aircraft.

"We just don't get that information," says one who declined to be named. "We can't tell if a flight is overbooked and passengers would never be told by an airline that they have bought a ticket that might lead to them being bumped."

Says one Auckland travel specialist, with more than 20 years in the business: "Ninety-five to 98 per cent of the time the overbooking thing works out okay. But every now and then the airline's guesstimate goes off and passengers are unable to travel. They [airlines] overbook and hope.

"Just last month a friend was travelling from Australia to New Zealand and was asked by Air New Zealand to take $200 and a later flight. He refused, so someone else got bumped.

"Bumping in the US and Europe is very bad - it's happening all the time."

To avoid bumping passengers, airlines normally move valued customers up to the front to free up lower-priced seats. Once all the seats are filled they ask for volunteers to take a later flight and the bumping begins. But even then planes may fly with empty seats if there is not enough in-flight food.

Being asked to delay your travelling is not as random as it might seem - there is a strict pecking order.

Behind the scenes the first people in the line of fire are the airline's staff who are travelling as passengers. Travel agents are next in line followed by people who have bought discounted tickets. The cheaper the ticket price the less secure your plans.

"The last people to get bumped will be Members of Parliament or frequent fliers of the airline," says the travel agent. "It will be the tourist or the novice traveller who gets the tap on the shoulder from the airline."

Our travel specialist advises passengers faced with an enforced bump to make a strong case for boarding the flight.

"But, the bottom line," he says, "is that ticket holders have a contract with the airline and if the airline breaks it then compensation should be paid."

But compensation is no help if you're expected somewhere, perhaps to make a connecting flight.

However, the contract with the airline offers the carrier plenty of room for manoeuvre.

One ticket contract's heading titled "Reservation not guaranteed" gives the game away.

Part of it reads: "while the carrier endeavours to accommodate all passengers with confirmed reservations, no guarantee of a seat on a particular flight is indicated by the terms 'reservation' or 'confirmed'."

Rosie Flay, Air New Zealand's spokesperson, says overbooking allows airlines to "manage optimal seating patterns on all flights. A balancing act between denied boardings at one extreme and excessive empty seats at the other.

"In the course of bookings for any one flight we may allow bookings to be taken beyond the capacity of the aircraft."

Which basically means that airlines generally appear to go hammer and tong to fill their flights and it's just too bad if more people than expected turn up.

Flay says passengers who are bumped by Air New Zealand receive overnight accommodation and travel the next day, a later flight with an upgrade and/or vouchers for food or discounted travel.

Overall, says Flay, the industry's "acceptable standard" is for 15 to 30 people to be bumped for every 10,000 passengers.

Air New Zealand, she says, expects 0.1 per cent of its passengers to be bumped - that means out of the 7.8 million people it carried last year up to 7800 were not allowed to board their chosen flight.

Says one reader who had trouble flying from Mexico: "We were towards the back of the queue of the check-in when we heard a commotion. When we got to the counter the person at the desk said, 'Sorry, we can't take any more'.

"We were not too worried and got a later flight, but one man in front of us was livid as he had to make a connection. The airline offered no compensation to the man or anyone."

In another case an airline caused a problem when a passenger agreed to be bumped, but the airline did not remove his name from the passenger list.

"We were at Tonga airport in the morning to meet my brother," says the man's relative. "He didn't come through the arrival gate, so we checked with the airline and his name was on the list. We even searched the aircraft for him.

"Unbeknown to us, he had agreed not to travel on condition the airline got a message to us. They didn't and he arrived on the next flight in the afternoon - but not before a lot of phone calls and to-and-fro'ing.

"Moral of the story - put your foot down and make sure you get on the flight."

One reader also suggested that bumped passengers should sue airlines for breach of contract.

However, the best advice seems to be: arrive at the airport at least one hour early, be at the gate before it opens and try to be the first person in line.

* What are your bumping experiences? E-mail them to travel@nzherald.co.nz and put 'bump' in the message field.