The Mystery Behind Airline Bumping

Posted by: Justin Bachman on July 21, 2010

A wild airline tale made the Internet rounds this week, in which United allegedly bumped passengers from a flight from Vermont to Washington based upon how much each had paid. United says fares were not a factor and that only one passenger was bumped involuntarily. Bruce Poon Tip, a frequent flier from Toronto, was on the flight and called the experience an “uncomfortable gong show.”

Because about one-quarter of the Burlington, Vt., airport’s longest runway is closed for renovations, the nearly sold-out 50-seat regional jet was too heavy for the July 13 flight, United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said Tuesday. The gate agent needed to remove seven people to make the allotted weigh limit, leading to six people volunteering their seats and one traveler bumped involuntarily, he said. Each received a $600 travel voucher and flew out the following day. “We make these decisions based on a variety of factors, the most important being how quickly we can get our customers to their destinations on later flights,” Johnson said in an email.

Poon Tip, who says he has flown 150,000 miles so far this year on the Star Alliance, of which United is a member, posted about the incident on his Twitter account from the airport. The experience was “extremely embarrassing” as an agent sought volunteers to achieve the proper takeoff weight, Poon Tip said Wednesday in a telephone interview from France, where he is on vacation.

This episode highlights the way travelers often have no inkling how airlines decide whom to bump and whether - when it comes to a snarled flight and rebooking - customer service is a matter of how profitable you are for a carrier.

Is your fare a good indicator of whether you’ll be bumped? The short answer is no. The contract of carriage invoked when you buy an airline ticket makes conveying you to your destination a top priority for any U.S. carrier. The longer answer is that your fare is typically one factor in a matrix of data airline agents use to devise a pecking order when they need one.

The good news is that airlines bump people only very rarely - passengers usually volunteer their seat, lured by the cash and/or free travel incentives airlines offer. In 2009, Southwest involuntarily bumped 13,113 passengers, the most of any U.S. airline, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That was out of 101.7 million people Southwest boarded. On the other extreme, JetBlue reported bumping 9 of its 22.3 million passengers involuntarily. A Southwest spokeswoman said the airline sets bumping order strictly by check-in time. Every airline has different methods and few care to discuss specifics of this process, given its delicacy.

Some of these factors, in no particular order:
_ how soon before a flight you checked in
_ your final destination and how many connecting flights remain that day
_ your fare
_ the airline's seat availability to your destination over the next 24-48 hours
_ where you bought your ticket
_ whether you are a member of the airline's frequent flier program
_ your status in the mileage program
_ your frequent flier mileage balance
_ how long you have been a program member

I'm sure airlines all weight such factors differently and probably toss even more into their mix. Several years ago, during an interview about bumping practices, a Delta employee told me that his airline also tracked how often you were a Delta customer. The point is if you have to bump someone, these are all perfectly valid criteria.

But in one sense, bumping based on what passengers paid would make it straightforward. Pay more, keep the seat; buy a bargain, you wait. In fact, judging by some online comments about the Vermont incident, plenty of people think that's how the bump system should work - minus an airline actually saying it examines fares.

"I know I'm gonna get flamed for this... but this makes sense to me - except for announcing it," someone called UCLAri wrote at Consumerist.com.

"The only thing wrong is that they announced the criteria. I think from a financial aspect, it makes sense that if you have to piss some people off, it should be the least paying people," a writer called tundey posted.

However, using one's fare would mean that price-sensitive fliers - kids traveling alone, large families and senior citizens - would be first to get booted off most flights, and if you're the airline these are not the people you really want to juggle in trying to find them new flights. From the perspective of limited seats, it's probably easier to sort out a solo business traveler or college student than a family with small children or a senior citizen fearful of navigating the maze of airport shuttles and hotels. And the longer you don't get where you're going the more expense it is likely to cost an airline.

"It's not about bashing United because that's not what I want to do," Poon Tip said on the telephone Wednesday. Instead, he said he hopes the airline ensures that no passengers are subject to embarrassment when the need to solicit volunteers arises. "Airlines have to bump people - that's the reality," he says.