American Airlines May Now Give Away Your Seat When You Run to Make a Connection | Hacker News Reader

American Airlines May Now Give Away Your Seat When You Run to Make a Connection

viewfromthewing.com

36 pointsjosephcsible31 comments

Nearly every aspect of flying in the US is abusive. Over-booking a flight should be illegal. I don’t care about being compensated for it - if I book a flight, that seat should be mine.

I’m wondering what else it will take for me to refuse flying altogether.

I flew from Providence to Orlando last week. The airline's website said (paraphrasing) "we don't oversell flights; this ticket guarantees you a seat."

As we were boarding, the gate agent made an announcement (again paraphrasing) "this flight is fully booked, and if your ticket doesn't have a seat assignment, you cannot board."

One of those two statements was false.

They sound consistent to me? Your ticket guaranteed a seat for you, but they might've sold some other tickets or given out vouchers that didn't guarantee any seat - like those tickets also saying "you can take any other flight on the same day if they have room", companion passes, etc.

Yep. Unless it was the first flight out, there were probably at least a few non-confirmed standby passengers and maybe a non-revenue ticket or two.

There are a bunch of scenarios where there are standby passengers on a flight who need seat assignments -- overbooking the flight is just one possible cause.

If you miss your connection are you willing to pay for a seat on a different flight since in your scenario the airline held your seat on the original flight and didn't assign it to a standby passenger? Because what happens right now on major US airlines is they put you on standby on the next available flight if they can't guarantee you a seat or get you a confirmed seat if possible at no additional charge.

Contingency plans are not my concern or problem. If the airline has to fly a plane without a person in every seat, so be it. That is good customer service to me — not abusing me so they can eke out more dollars per flight.

Good luck with that.

Thanks.

And if you were to complain, then you'd be gambling with the vindictiveness level of the gate agents.

>Nearly every aspect of flying in the US is abusive. Over-booking a flight should be illegal. I don’t care about being compensated for it - if I book a flight, that seat should be mine.

I agree, but if you want that put in place, expect the price of flights to at least triple in cost. I'm fine with that - most Americans would lose their minds and demand the old system of overbooked cheap flights come back.

Why would it come close to tripling? I don’t believe they oversell all of the seats three times on every flight.

That’s not how it works… airlines have a minimum load factor for a flight to be profitable, generally 75-80%. They over book with an assumption that X% of people won’t show up based on decades of data. The hotel industry does the exact same thing.

If you tell them they can’t overbook at all, their options are to either cut flights or raise prices. That also means all the discount tickets that make up that overbooking amount goes away.

I guess if you’ve only ever bought full fare tickets you might only see a 30% increase, but if you’re only ever booking full fare, you aren’t the one getting bumped.

> Nearly every aspect of flying in the US is abusive.

I hear flying by private jet is where it's at. No muss, no fuss. Just walk on the tarmac, get on the plane and off you go. At least, that's what I hear.

Ok, but we’re talking about flying commercially, in case you missed all the context clues.

"May" or "will"? The only example given here is a passenger who got bumped from first to economy.

I hate American Airlines (and most airlines) as much as the next person, but I have to say that it seems much more the norm to hold a whole plane to allow people to get on who would've missed than it is to write them off. I've been on both ends of that.

If I paid for first class, you gave my seat away, and I was offered an exit row or a next-day flight, I would weigh my options and then absolutely tear you apart on the customer service line. Not at the gate; there's little that can be done there at the last second. But after.

I can't understand what brings someone to stay overnight in order to travel first class, rather that sit in an exit row in economy for 4 hours.

It's already been a problem that airlines can book you on a schedule without enough time to make a transfer. I've only had that happen with US carriers at US airports, so far. When buying a ticket, I consider whether there is sufficient layover time given the airport.

How to hate your customers 2023.

Is there a legal recourse? As in, breach of contract or whatever for being stranded?

tl;dr: if their new predictive AI tool thinks you're "certain" to miss your connection, they'll give your seat to a standby passenger right away, so even if you do end up making it on time (which has really happened, despite the "certain" claim), you're out of luck.

Surely the perfectly informed consumer will vote with their dollar to put them out of business, or make them change their decision.

One customer isn't going to make a difference. Customers need to band together and boycott as a bloc.

Or get the government to pass laws to make this illegal.

If you are waiting for a flight and find 5 informed consumers to rub together at the gate, you've possibly performed a miracle.

And take Greyhound to the destination that only American flies to.

I'm getting the feeling that AI / "the algorithm" is statting to get the blame for what is actually just policy. Like, a single if statement in the code.

Using generative AI for decision-making is going to bring the world to an end. There is no way people can trust anything to work.

Ah, the refund guaranteed if on that list in europe. That's convenient..

Hey, this sounds like a good opportunity for them to leverage GPS information in their own app. They can analyze your present location and velocity, and determine from that whether you will make it to the gate on time!

So even if you were an Olympic sprinter and show up for a close connection, they already went ahead and gave away the seat you paid for without asking you. That's next level gotcha capitalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com