Airline bumping rates continue to decline
After a Kentucky doctor was dragged off a United Airlines plane in April, the nation’s airlines vowed to reduce the number of passengers who are bumped from overbooked flights.
They seem to be making good on the promise.
In the July-to-September quarter, the nation’s 12 biggest airlines reported the lowest rate of passengers denied seats since the Department of Transportation began keeping track of the data in 1995.
For the three-month period, the airlines involuntarily denied boarding to 2,745 passengers out of more than 177 million fliers, according to the Transportation Department’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division. That’s a rate of 0.15 passengers bumped for every 10,000 fliers.
For the same quarter a year earlier, the bumping rate was 0.69 for every 10,000 fliers. The previous lowest quarterly rate of 0.44 came in the second quarter of 2017.
United ranked fourth with 0.04 bumped passengers for every 10,000 fliers, below Delta and Virgin America, both at 0.01, and JetBlue 0.02, according to the Department of Transportation.
“Today’s report reflects what we know to be true — U.S. airlines are improving on the things that matter most to customers when they fly,” said Alison McAfee, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, the trade group for the nation’s airlines.
Bumping rates became a hot topic after airport police boarded a fully booked United flight in Chicago on April 9 to remove David Dao, a physician who refused to give up his seat to make room for a flight crew member who needed to fly to Kentucky to work the next day.
The airport police ended up physically dragging Dao from the plane.