
Paying more and arriving early are the best ways to secure your seat on an overbooked flight.
FlySafair recently came under fire for its practice of “overbooking” flights, which saw it denying boarding to certain customers over the December holidays.
While being barred from taking a flight you paid for is an unpleasant experience, overbooking is standard practice in the aviation industry and has been for years. It assists airlines in mitigating the financial impact of no-show passengers whilst keeping air travel as cheap as possible.
It’s almost guaranteed that a handful of passengers won’t show up for a flight for various reasons, such as transport hiccups, a domestic crisis, or even missing the boarding call, leaving a few empty seats on the plane.
The more tickets available, the more the costs can be spread across customers, too, thus lowering overall ticket prices.
Airlines are aware that overbooking can create issues, and thus have a strict cap on the amount of extra tickets that can be purchased. In the case of FlySafair, the airline limits overbooking to 1% of the plane’s capacity, which usually equates to about two seats.
However, once in a while all the stars align and every passenger shows up to a flight.
When this happens, the airline generally asks people who do not seem to be in a rush if they’d be willing to wait for the next flight in return for things such as vouchers, cash, or other compensation.
If no one gives up their seat freely, the airline will have to make the tough choice of denying boarding to some passengers to avoid overloading the plane.
This luckily doesn’t happen too often. FlySafair said it has only bumped 0.0006% of its customers due to overbooking in the last 10 months.
Securing your seat
To avoid being among the unfortunate few barred from boarding their flights, you can take a few steps to improve your odds of securing a seat.
In a Newzroom Afrika interview, aviation expert Guy Leitch suggested that one can book a specific seat on a plane for an additional fee, in which case you will be assured of getting that seat and won’t be bumped off.
Additionally, the airline usually only realises that it won’t have enough spots left over once nearly all the passengers have boarded.
Standing closer to the front of the boarding queue will therefore increase your chances of getting on the plane.
It’s also of vital importance to make sure you check in on time. Should you miss the cutoff time for check-in, your seat will automatically become available on the airline’s systems.
In this scenario, it will be given to the first person on standby even if you do show up while boarding is still taking place.
Unfortunately, Leitch noted that the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) does not afford protection to customers kept from boarding a flight specifically due to overbooking.
It does, however, stipulate the “conditions of carriage” which is a contract that the airline enters into with the passenger that says the airline must get the passenger to their destination.
“Maybe it’ll be a couple of hours late, and maybe the airline will even put the passenger on another airline for the sake of completing that contract, but I’m afraid there’s no specific protection offered by the CPA in this case [of overbooking],” said Leitch.
He highlighted that it may not always be the airline’s fault when there aren’t enough seats available.
“Often, it’s not the airline’s fault at all that there’s been overbooking. Quite often, an airplane goes technical, and it can’t fly, and they have to pull a standby one out,” said Leitch.
“So, instead of having a 183-seater… they might only have 160-seat aircraft which are the ones on standby, so then 20 people end up getting bumped or not being accommodated.”
South Africa is also behind its first-world peers such as the United States and Europe when it comes to passenger rights.
“South Africa is a little bit behind in terms of passenger rights in this regard. Both in the United States and in Europe, there are more rigorous penalties than we have here for airlines duly delaying passengers beyond typically about three hours, serious penalties kick in,” said Leitch.
However, sharpening up the regulation in this area could be a double-edge sword as it will undoubtedly have an impact on ticket prices.
Join the discussion