"Harry Krause" wrote in message

United acted as it did, "knowing we would oversell the flight."

All flights are oversold, because the industry has learned over the last
forty years or so that American travellers are predictably unreliable about
showing up. The various airlines are usually quite accurate in their
predictions, but anomalies arise from time to time.


If United gave a crap, it would have made another plane available, or it
wouldn't have overbooked so drastically.

Contrary to popularly held myth, there usually isn't another plane
available. You simply don't keep a 20M asset lying around a non-hub in case
something comes up. If the occasion arises at a hub, you may be able to
jockey things and cover an additional flight, but it is not likely. If you
latch onto a craft that is scheduled to leave 2 hours from now, the downline
ramifications of such a decision could disrupt your network for days and
possible cost millions.

JG

OK, I'll rephrase for the benefit of those who are unable to interpolate
rational detail:

Most flights are allowed to be oversold. Some few flights in specific
high-traffic markets have predictable high show rates, and their allowed
overbooking percentage is usually very low. Other flight segments rarely if
ever fill up at certain times or on certain days, so clearly there is no
need for any overbooking policy there.


"bb" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:45:45 -0500, "John Gaquin"
wrote:


All flights are oversold,

Interesting. I've been on flights that only had 10 or 15 people on
them. Musta been a lot of no shows.

bb