Flight Booking Authorization Levels

[InternationalShannon]

the overbooking way past auth is a self feeding problem. Agents and supervisors who work the same flights have been caught hiding seats in inventory in advance to save their hides from the fallout on departure day. That way they have 6 or so seats in "their pocket" . It helps them out temporarily, but then the people in Tempe see that it went out at capacity and figure they can overbook it by about 6 more and get away with some vouchers that are hoping wont ever get turned in. I am hearing also that the tfc's are nearly impossible to book with because of laughable amount of seats available for those types of tickets on any given flight.

But, don't listen to anything I say because half of it isn't true and the other half is alcohol induced. 🙂 what a fun character to play.

Kiss kiss!

 

[hp_fa]

the overbooking way past auth is a self feeding problem. Agents and supervisors who work the same flights have been caught hiding seats in inventory in advance to save their hides from the fallout on departure day. That way they have 6 or so seats in "their pocket" . It helps them out temporarily, but then the people in Tempe see that it went out at capacity and figure they can overbook it by about 6 more and get away with some vouchers that are hoping wont ever get turned in.

Absolutely correct.

 

[PI Blue]

This is an age old problem. But you ...They... have to realize what looks good on a spread sheet does NOT work in real life. The children in the sandbox need some real airline experience.

 

[supercruiser]

When I worked for PEX, some of the flights were booked to DOUBLE the capacity, I kid you not. I commuted from LAX-EWR on a 747 that was booked sometimes to 1100; a plane that held 490 in our configuration. 727's booked over 300 regularly.

Believe it or not, the no show factor was so high, many times those flights still went out with empty seats. However, especially around the holidays, you might have several HUNDRED oversales on a single flight on a 747. Passengers didn't want to go on the next flight (there wasn't one, or it too was overbooked by double). They wanted to get home for the holidays. There was no interline agreement of course, and no other airline would take their $99 ticket, so chaos ruled. The police had to come to the gate multiple times to quell the near riots. Oh the good ole days.

 

[tadjr]

Inventory management programs have improved so much since then (did they even have one back then) that with few exceptions (traffic wrecks or our new computer system 😉 ) they can figure no shows on most flights very precise. Of course I hate the big group no shows (the military recruits not showing have been a big problem the past few weeks). The problem, as I understand it, is that no data was saved from the old US system so the new US system could tell historical data for the flights. Instead of a lets book conservative and see what happens, we've been in a lets fill them up and better (hopefully) plan for next year when we see we overbooked this year by 20 and only had 4 noshows.

 

[BoeingBoy]

The problem, as I understand it, is that no data was saved from the old US system so the new US system could tell historical data for the flights.

Another victim of the systems not matching on each side, ala Sabre/Shares, perhaps.....

Jim

 

[tadjr]

Nobody overbooks by 15.9%.

Todays total was 76 DBS probably including a couple invols tonight. Had a 757 for tonight authorized as of Sat pm to 214 (holds 185 so 15.7%.) Today when I came in it was booked to 210 (13.5%) au showing 195 (5.4%). Too little, too late. The flight took a 26 min delay tonight and last I looked still showed 11 on the HKN list with 0 vols left. Guess someone might have a note on their desk tomorrow morning? We told you it wasnt going to work on a holiday weekend booking them that high. Another case of us just wanting it easy at work and not knowing what we're talking about? :down:

 

[US1YFARE]

and to think that airlines like AA were not booking middle seats on flights during heavy travel periods in case there was bad weather or cancellations...

 

[tadjr]

Well, dont know how long AA planned on doing that. I rode the bus out tonight with a couple of AA agents (1 had 2 hours overtime tonight) and he had a stack of oversale vouchers with him that he had given out today.
The problem with the US version is we had told the inventory agent that the numbers for US couldnt support the aus as high as they were and nothing was done about it until it was way too late. I have checked a couple of other nights between now and the end of Feb for this flight and it looks like common sense has prevailed (at least for now) and they've lowered the aus MOST every night. Theres still a couple up around 206, but we'll have to see how they actually play out. If you dont have the data to support the flight history, at least listen to the managers when they say they arent going to work. I know the agents that have to work the flights would like a 0 oversale au, but we all know that isnt the right number either. There has to be some happy medium until the history is recaptured. (And why wasnt it saved/brought over from the old system if that IS the reason for the problems?)

 

[sharktooth]

I seriously hope you took the time to fill out an irregularity report to document that you had the chat and they would not drop the AU, and then took three DB's because they didn't listen to you. Send a copy to Revenue Management and another copy to the VP of Operations, which is probably the lowest level where the customer service folks meet the revenue management folks in the corporate tree.

So, ya gotta pay scale for filling out all the extra paperwork and, more important, followup? Irregularity report? You mean the pieces of paper that disappear into the corp. black hole, with no sign the paperwork was received, much less considered?

What about an organization that actually audits itself? Seems to me an IG-like apparatus could actually strike gold at this company.

 

[SegmentKing]

back when "East" ran the show, our AU's were done in a curve... for example the MDA flights with 72 seats. 6 months out, only 1/2 the plane was for sale. 3 months out, the AU's were even with capacity. 1 month out, we were selling to 78. Day BEFORE we were at 74, and day OF, we were back at 72... and this was on our "high peak" flight. Off peak flights were normally kept at 74-76 until DAY of, then it would drop automatically by 2 seats.