Airline Passenger Bumping Rates Just Hit a 22-Year Low
By Ryan Craggs. Photos: Getty.
In early April, media was abuzz over a United Airlines passenger being violently dragged from a plane. Rough interpretation of the rules aside, the fiasco shed light on the (probably) necessary, but (likely) overused practice of overbooking flights. In the aftermath of all that outcry, however, comes a positive note: Passenger bumping in the first half of 2017 has hit a 22-year low.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's latest Air Travel Consumer Report found that for the 12 U.S. airlines reporting involuntary denied boarding (IDB, known more commonly as bumping), the rate had dropped to 0.52 per 10,000 passengers, "the lowest January through June rate based on historical data dating back to 1995." Comparatively, that figure was 0.62 for the first half of 2016.
More importantly, the rate for the second quarter of 2017—or immediately after the United PR nightmare—was 0.44 per 10,000, the lowest quarterly rate dating back to 1995. The previous low quarterly rate happened in the third quarter of 2002, when the DOT found a rate of 0.50 per 10,000 passengers.
Overall, Delta had the lowest bump rate in the first half of 2017, with just 0.10 per 10,000 passengers. Spirit Airlines—frequently the airline with the lowest customer satisfaction—took the ignominious prize of having the worst rate in that same span, at 1.06 per 10,000 passengers, more than double the industry average.
While United Airlines' rate remained static at 0.44 per 10,000 for both the first quarter and second quarter of 2017, a number of customer-focused improvements, including paying passengers up to $10,000 to voluntarily deboard, have lowered the bump rate significantly. A United spokeswoman told the New York Times that while the airline had 957 IDBs in April, it only saw 61 in May and 46 in June.
This seems to be a positive sign for airline passengers—and recent studies have shown investors prefer airlines with better customer service records. It may have taken a bloodied passenger and a tremendous public blemish to effect change, but it appears to have come.
How long airlines keep this up, however, no one knows.
This story originally appeared on Conde Nast Traveler.
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