AA had an Astounding 483 IDB's in 3 Months; WN 669!

jumbojet · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:46 am

How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

kordcj · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:51 am

IDB=Involuntary Denied Boarding

a320fan · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:52 am

Would help if you could explain what IDBs are

waly777 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:56 am

jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

If you mean involuntary denied boarding. Those are really low per 10,000 flown for the international industry standard. These are both less than 1 per 10k flown.

I wonder what the closed flight seat factor is for their flights on average.

FlyHappy · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:01 am

a320fan wrote:
Would help if you could explain what IDBs are

Denied boarding. Oversold seats or otherwise.

BatonOps · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:08 am

jumbojet wrote:

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

Someone is being a little overdramatic!!

grbauc · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:13 am

OH my god.... I love My vouchers and upgrades for taking other flights and so do many. Not all but I think its safe to say many do. Moving on waiting for next drama Social media drama to be outraged about.

Runway28L · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:19 am

a320fan wrote:
Would help if you could explain what IDBs are

As well as provide the link/article where this info is coming from.

TWA772LR · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:31 am

grbauc wrote:
OH my god.... I love My vouchers and upgrades for taking other flights and so do many. Not all but I think its safe to say many do. Moving on waiting for next drama Social media drama to be outraged about.

I had a few oversells today and yesterday and for all but one managed to get my volunteers on because of no shows. Ive never seen someone so depressed about not being volunatrily denied boarding lol. My airline has a bidding process where we up our prices higher the closer we get to departure time. I had to go on a plane once and offer people $1250 + the One way fare 2 minutes from push back and everyone raised their hand on that plane real quick!

I haven't done an invol yet but will dread the day that comes.

joeblow10 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:38 am

It is pretty interesting that WN, who supposedly doesn't "oversell" flights anymore (but does "overbook") would have the highest rate of invols...

Andy33 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:49 am

Is the metric used for producing these statistics designed to include only passengers denied boarding because of overbooking; last minute substitutions by aircraft with lower capacity; need to reduce weight because of weather conditions; or seats taken out of service at the last minute due to breakages/spillages etc? Or does it also include passengers on international flights who do not have the correct documents to enter the destination country (visa etc); people denied boarding because of their behaviour in the airport; the usual drunks; people dressed inappropriately; people denied for medical reasons (infectious disease, recent surgery without 'fit to fly' letter etc); people whose tickets have been cancelled by the airline's fraud unit - I could go on?

airportugal310 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:06 am

jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

We get it...you love Delta. Try being less transparent next time

BoeingGuy · Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:51 am

airportugal310 wrote:
jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

We get it...you love Delta. Try being less transparent next time

He also loves to throw out acronyms without considering that maybe not everyone else knows what it means.

NYPECO · Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:53 am

Is IDB a common term that most people are supposed to know? And where did you get the data from?

77H · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:07 am

BatonOps wrote:
jumbojet wrote:

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

Someone is being a little overdramatic!!

While interesting, I have a suspicion this particular OP brought this up as a way to shed bad light on airlines that don’t start with a D and end with elta.

Interesting that UA was second lowest according this list. Good to see they are making good on their plan to reduce the number of IDBs in the wake of last years incident.

Didn’t AA and WN both say they were putting similar plans in place in light of UA’s incident? An instance of not putting ones money where the mouth is ?

77H

77H · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:10 am

airportugal310 wrote:
jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

We get it...you love Delta. Try being less transparent next time

+1

airtran737 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:48 am

I can tell tell you as. 145 pilot and we are heavy with bags, cargo people, long stage length, high temperature, fuel (dispatch add, admin, or ferry); that we will be weight restricted like crazy. And guess what? These all happed on day of departure. So they will capnthe flights, and start soliciting. If they don’t get the volunteers then we bump them. I departed runway 13 in BNA the other day on a station ATO takeoff for ORD and still couldn’t get everyone to ORD.

airtran737 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:49 am

I can tell tell you as. 145 pilot and we are heavy bags, cargo people, long stage length, high temperature, fuel (dispatch add, admin, or ferry); that we will be weight restricted like crazy. And guess what? These all happed on day of departure. So they will capnthe flights, and start soliciting. If they don’t get the volunteers then we bump them. I departed runway 13 in BNA the other day on a station ATO takeoff for ORD and still couldn’t get everyone to ORD.

GCT64 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:49 am

Putting aside the blatant and transparent bashing of one airline and celebrating another, how do you get IDBs in the post-Dr Dao world?

Surely "everyone has a price" and airlines should simply keep raising the offer until it is voluntary and not an IDB? (that way you get to report zero IDBs) I guess the statistics show that some airlines are willing to raise the price to a higher level than others - is that likely to be a correct interpretation?

The experience above supports this notion: "I had to go on a plane once and offer people $1250 + the One way fare 2 minutes from push back and everyone raised their hand on that plane real quick!"

AAtakeMeAway · Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:58 pm

airtran737 wrote:
I can tell tell you as. 145 pilot and we are heavy bags, cargo people, long stage length, high temperature, fuel (dispatch add, admin, or ferry); that we will be weight restricted like crazy. And guess what? These all happed on day of departure. So they will capnthe flights, and start soliciting. If they don’t get the volunteers then we bump them. I departed runway 13 in BNA the other day on a station ATO takeoff for ORD and still couldn’t get everyone to ORD.

Sorry to sound dense; I'm trying my best to understand this post. I'm not sure if it's truly poorly written/proofread, or if it's the use of acronyms and terminology that I'm just not familiar with.

Are you simply saying that being overweight is a common reason for denied boarding (voluntary or otherwise) in your professional experience, or is there more to the post that I'm not understanding?

MIflyer12 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:37 pm

Andy33 wrote:
Is the metric used for producing these statistics designed to include only passengers denied boarding because of overbooking; last minute substitutions by aircraft with lower capacity; need to reduce weight because of weather conditions; or seats taken out of service at the last minute due to breakages/spillages etc? Or does it also include passengers on international flights who do not have the correct documents to enter the destination country (visa etc); people denied boarding because of their behaviour in the airport; the usual drunks; people dressed inappropriately; people denied for medical reasons (infectious disease, recent surgery without 'fit to fly' letter etc); people whose tickets have been cancelled by the airline's fraud unit - I could go on?

See 14 CFR 250.10 and its references.

catiii · Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:51 pm

jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

How many did B6 have? You love to bash them in order to highlight your DL lust, so do the right thing here. And how many pax were flown over that time period for WN an AA?

Mountain out of a molehill...

UpNAWAy · Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:52 pm

Isn't that something less than one person per every thousand flights? And with summer temps and weight restrictions seems pretty easy to happen. This is a nothing story. The astonishing part is how minuscule they all are.

catiii · Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:53 pm

GCT64 wrote:
Putting aside the blatant and transparent bashing of one airline and celebrating another, how do you get IDBs in the post-Dr Dao world?

Surely "everyone has a price" and airlines should simply keep raising the offer until it is voluntary and not an IDB? (that way you get to report zero IDBs) I guess the statistics show that some airlines are willing to raise the price to a higher level than others - is that likely to be a correct interpretation?

The experience above supports this notion: "I had to go on a plane once and offer people $1250 + the One way fare 2 minutes from push back and everyone raised their hand on that plane real quick!"

A string of consecutive days with significant IROPS in an airline's system would contribute.

Andy33 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 3:10 pm

MIflyer12 wrote:
See 14 CFR 250.10 and its references.

Thanks for that. Oddly enough having read the entire section, although there are definitions of several different terms used in 14 CFR 20.10, nowhere is there one of Involuntary Denied Boarding. However as the whole section is headed Oversales, we could reasonably assume it only refers to overbooking (and presumably by extension reduction in aircraft capacity by substitutions or weight restrictions).
That's interesting because in Europe it is recognised that there are other forms of Involuntary Denied Boarding for which airlines are required to compensate passengers, and presumably the US DOT sees these as sufficiently rare to be not worth reporting. The European rules through case law include some of the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post, where the airline has denied boarding even though space was available, and the decision turns out to be based on an incorrect interpretation of other regulations or a misunderstanding of facts. A textbook example would be denying boarding on an international flight where a passenger doesn't have a visa for the destination, or a transit visa for a connecting point, when in fact they don't need one due to falling under some exemption.
There's also cases where people were denied boarding "because they were late" but accidentally or deliberately ground staff have closed check-in or gates earlier than the time passengers were instructed to be there by. Not to be confused with the much larger number of cases where the passengers really are late, of course.

fastmover · Wed Jul 25, 2018 3:28 pm

jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

Did you forget Jetblue?

Antarius · Wed Jul 25, 2018 3:41 pm

Source?

Sorry, this thread should be closed otherwise as no one has any idea whether these numbers are real.

nmdrdh787 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 3:52 pm

Note to self, fly AA and WN more to get a voucher... :stirthepot:

bob75013 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:21 pm

nmdrdh787 wrote:
Note to self, fly AA and WN more to get a voucher...

Let's see now WN flew about 40 million people in 1Q18. There were 669 IDBs (if true -- no link yet provided), so your odds of getting a voucher are about 1 in 60,000.

NYPECO · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:27 pm

So there's still no source for this info? I couldn't find anything on Google.

MO11 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:28 pm

Antarius wrote:
Source?

Sorry, this thread should be closed otherwise as no one has any idea whether these numbers are real.

https://www.bts.gov/content/2018-report-passengers-denied-confirmed-space-1st-quarter

Delta must have superior compensation; it had 8000 more volunteers than AA. And look at the number of reaccommodations.

ozark1 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:31 pm

BatonOps wrote:
jumbojet wrote:

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

Someone is being a little overdramatic!!

Completely agree

mhkansan · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:40 pm

The number of IDBs has gone WAAAAY down at AA since the United incident in Chicago. All airlines are being much more proactive at working oversales and getting the necessary volunteers or even pre-removing customers in some cases.

Antarius · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:43 pm

MO11 wrote:
Antarius wrote:
Source?

Sorry, this thread should be closed otherwise as no one has any idea whether these numbers are real.

https://www.bts.gov/content/2018-report-passengers-denied-confirmed-space-1st-quarter

Delta must have superior compensation; it had 8000 more volunteers than AA. And look at the number of reaccommodations.

Thank you.

GCT64 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:45 pm

MO11 wrote:
Antarius wrote:
Source?
Sorry, this thread should be closed otherwise as no one has any idea whether these numbers are real.

https://www.bts.gov/content/2018-report-passengers-denied-confirmed-space-1st-quarter

Delta must have superior compensation; it had 8000 more volunteers than AA. And look at the number of reaccommodations.

55,000 on Delta reaccomodated by downgrading into another section of the aircraft? that seems a vast number of downgrades

Osubuckeyes · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:48 pm

GCT64 wrote:
MO11 wrote:
Antarius wrote:
Source?
Sorry, this thread should be closed otherwise as no one has any idea whether these numbers are real.

https://www.bts.gov/content/2018-report-passengers-denied-confirmed-space-1st-quarter

Delta must have superior compensation; it had 8000 more volunteers than AA. And look at the number of reaccommodations.

55,000 on Delta reaccomodated by downgrading into another section of the aircraft? that seems a vast number of downgrades

My guess is that this is due to DL being pretty aggressive with equipment swaps to keep schedules tight. I had two flights on a recent trip that were downgauged on day of departure from 739 to 738. F cabin on both flights only 1 seat available so that resulted in 3 people being downgraded on each flight.

neomax · Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:50 pm

The real news is the United figure. Amazing.

xdlx · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:09 pm

airportugal310 wrote:
jumbojet wrote:
How does that happen? 483 IDB's for the Jan - March quarter for AA.

Even worse, WN had 669 IDB's for the same perod.

Thats a lot of unhappy folks.

How do these two airlines allow that to happen? Disgraceful.

In contrast, DL had only 13 and UA had 27.

We get it...you love Delta. Try being less transparent next time

Besides as a former Gate Agent I can tell you that ACCEPTING COMPENSATION does not mean you are NOT IDB. This is DL definition.
True, People when offered compensation become FLEXIBLE, but if they completed the CI process and are at the gate as is required to be a DB, the intentions are to get on the flight. ENTICING THEM TO ACCEPT the DB is the art of being a GATE AGENT, and to convert them from an INVOL to VOL works 90% of the times.
The ONLY WAY to stop this is to make AIRLINES PAY IN CASH for the compensation....... As long as they give you Credits, Miles or detergent coupons.... is a bad tradeoff ! And reflects poorly in the Revenue Management department.

lightsaber · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:22 pm

[threeid][/threeid]

NYPECO wrote:
Is IDB a common term that most people are supposed to know? And where did you get the data from?

Yes, IDB is a common term.

It's most common use is Inventory DataBase. :duck:

You look at the IDB atBoeing, Airbus, and other vendors to find parts.

Oh wait... This is another IDB. Involuntary Denied Boarding.

It is also the Islamic development bank
Israeli discount bank

Meh... I live acronyms, but we avoid duplicating the common ones.
https://www.allacronyms.com/IDB

At least it wasn't a list of sex acts one rather innocent co-worker selected... :rotfl:

Lightsaber

IPFreely · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:28 pm

GCT64 wrote:
Putting aside the blatant and transparent bashing of one airline and celebrating another, how do you get IDBs in the post-Dr Dao world?

Since so many people associate involuntary denied boardings with Dr. Dao, we should be clear -- he was on a United Express flight operated by Republic Airlines. So these statistics would not have counted him as a United "IDB". I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but be aware these statistics are "mainline only". Which means -- especially in a world of RJ's with takeoff weight/temperature/reduced payload limits -- that they are highly misleading.

ltbewr · Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:58 pm

I wonder if IDB's are greater on certain flights than others, at peak travel times of the year or day of week, to/from certain destinations, last flight of the day.

Andy33 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 6:30 pm

Now we've got a link to the actual source, I have to say I do wonder how useful it is to consumers, given that Expressjet, Mesa, PSA, Envoy, Endeavour, Skywest and Republic are all shown separately. Even us av-geeks won't be able to merge the data for all of these back into the airlines they are flying for, although some are obvious. Really shouldn't contract flying's successes and failures be attributed to the airlines who award the contracts and run the reservation systems that produce the oversales? Quite often it is also the contract-awarding airline whose gate agents are succeeding or failing to produce volunteers.

United787 · Wed Jul 25, 2018 6:45 pm

I am not surprised that WN is so "high". If you don't charge a change fee, I would assume you would need to overbook a certain percentage to keep your load numbers up... Usually it works out but not all the time.

Incidentally, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, it felt like flights were overbooked all the time. My mom was always the first to volunteer our family of 7, despite her kids moaning and groaning...

ZuluTime · Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:26 pm

I work in the industry and I didn't know what "IDB" stood for either.

If you look at the source figures, the way I read it tells you quite a few things:

DL are consistently overselling premium classes in particular given the number of downgrades for cash, but they must compensate well when they're overbooked (either aircraft or class) as their rate of volunteers is very high compared to the number of passengers potentially affected.

AA are not being as racy on the overbookings on DL but are less generous with compensation when it goes wrong as their rate of involuntary denial is quite high relative to DL.
Their rate of denied boardings due to equipment substitutions seems far higher than DL suggesting operational integrity is not as strong - i.e. aircraft substitutions to keep on-time performance are higher than DL.

UA figures are somewhere in the middle. They don't overbook as much as DL but equally don't compensate as well when they get into trouble.

The WN figures are actually pretty good and support that they don't overbook - given the scale of their operation, I'd say their numbers are excellent and maybe related to in-op individual seats on particular airframes or weather-related performance issues on some routings. Given the low numbers denied and those volunteering, WN could presumably take itself out of the heat on this league table very quickly by upping its compensation to get more volunteers without any real impact to its bottom line.

The DL figures - in my view - show a clear business decision that their bottom line will be improved by taking a more bullish oversales position, particularly up front, and offering high compensation when it doesn't work out to get volunteers for offload or downgrade. Although you can't isolate the effect of any one management policy from the consolidated financials reported, I'd be strongly inclined to back the DL approach.

adamblang · Wed Jul 25, 2018 8:10 pm

Useful context:

Carrier IDBs Boardings IDB %
AS 120 5,844,254 0.0021%
G4 58 3,306,693 0.0018%
AA 483 31,525,870 0.0015%
DL 13 30,868,044 0.0000%
F9 188 4,416,868 0.0043%
HA 2 2,676,265 0.0001%
B6 7 8,927,623 0.0001%
WN 669 37,042,370 0.0018%
NK 410 6,180,877 0.0066%
UA 27 21,314,280 0.0001%
VX 22 2,045,185 0.0011%

kavok · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:12 pm

I am guessing it really depends on how much the airlines are willing to top their offer at before IDB someone. To me, and I could be misinformed, it appears that DL/UA are simply willing to go higher with their offers than other airlines (even if they don’t have to go higher legally).

jumbojet · Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:16 pm

Runway28L wrote:
a320fan wrote:
Would help if you could explain what IDBs are

As well as provide the link/article where this info is coming from.

https://www.bts.gov/topics/airlines-and-airports-0

alasizon · Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:47 pm

ltbewr wrote:
I wonder if IDB's are greater on certain flights than others, at peak travel times of the year or day of week, to/from certain destinations, last flight of the day.

Of course they are. Certain destinations are going to get hit harder with leisure traffic as well others that get hit harder with weather restrictions.

DL's excessive number of upgrades/downgrades compared with AA & UA shows that the way they classify things with the revenue management team is differrent and they get passengers to sign their rights away to be considered a vol instead of invol.

jayunited · Thu Jul 26, 2018 12:22 am

Before we start heaping praise on both DL and UA lets get the facts and the real reason why the numbers are so low. The facts are UA ripped a page right out of DL's playbook in that when a flight is oversold they ask passengers during the check-in process how much they would be willing to accept to give up their seat for a later flight. If it becomes necessary UA will select the passengers starting with the lowest bid and work their way up till they have enough seats. As a result of this process these passengers are not considered IDB they are considered voluntary. However there have been a few cases where UA did in fact have to pony up and pay passengers thousands of dollars in vouchers for their seat. In fact wasn't it this past winter that a passenger scored a 10,000 dollar voucher for their seat when UA couldn't find a anyone to take a later flight on the following day?

The more I look into DL the more I realize how savvy they will delay a flight over 24 hours to keep from canceling just to say we've had "X" number of days without a single cancellation and now together with UA they are skewing the numbers to make it appear on paper like they are no longer overselling flights and I can tell you the numbers quoted are not true actual numbers. While our overbookings have dropped we are still overselling a lot of flights.

Miamiairport · Thu Jul 26, 2018 12:45 am

I’m always on the lookout for a VB. In the past 3 years I’ve volunteered 3x and both times not needed. It’s a rarity and even with better data the airlines have an excellent grasp on no show rates. One Sunday DEN/LAX Flight was oversold by 10. I thought for sure I’d walk away with a $500 voucher but in the end I was told to board.

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