Aer lingus overbooking

adam88

Just a quick question. Since when did aer lingus start overbooking. My brother was flying to Glasgow with aer lingus yesterday. No he was running very late and was sailing close to the wind but when he arrived they said his flight was full that it was overbooked and his seat was gone. I found this to be very unusual and I wouldn't have believed it only for my father confirming the same. He eventually got on board due to someone not being able to board or something but found it unusual for aer lingus to over book

Cloudio9

adam88 wrote: »

Just a quick question. Since when did aer lingus start overbooking. My brother was flying to Glasgow with aer lingus yesterday. No he was running very late and was sailing close to the wind but when he arrived they said his flight was full that it was overbooked and his seat was gone. I found this to be very unusual and I wouldn't have believed it only for my father confirming the same. He eventually got on board due to someone not being able to board or something but found it unusual for aer lingus to over book

They always overbook. Nothing unusual

Locker10a

I've yet to come across an airline that doesn't overbook. Certainly all Irish airlines overbook and all the ones in the U.K. I've dealt with

jimmycrackcorm

How does overbooking come into play of you do online checkin in advance with a seat allocation?

The J Stands for Jay

adam88 wrote: »

Just a quick question. Since when did aer lingus start overbooking. My brother was flying to Glasgow with aer lingus yesterday. No he was running very late and was sailing close to the wind but when he arrived they said his flight was full that it was overbooked and his seat was gone. I found this to be very unusual and I wouldn't have believed it only for my father confirming the same. He eventually got on board due to someone not being able to board or something but found it unusual for aer lingus to over book

I know they were doing it back in 2000, and I'd assume they've been doing it for decades before.

Locker10a

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

How does overbooking come into play of you do online checkin in advance with a seat allocation?

I'm not 100% sure, the likes of Ryanair only allow online check in so I think it either double books a seat it says on the boarding pass to seek assistance at gate. Where an open seat will be handwritten on.
It should be mentioned that Airlines are very very clever with over booking and have done huge analysis on how and when to do it. E.g Both Aer Lingus and Ryanair offer multiple flights per day in DUB - London, they know from their own data that a certain amount of booked seats will go empty due to business meetings being cancelled or changed etc. So there will always be passengers on these flights who don't turn up. So they will sell some seats twice and 99% of the time there'll be no issue at all

Bob24

It says here that Ryanair never overbooks and that Aer Lingus does it very rarely and if a passenger is impacted they will be informed at the point of checking-in.

So it seems like there is zero chance of overbooking with Ryanair, and "remote in the extreme" chances with Aer Lingus knowing that once you have a seat number assigned you are 100% safe.

Luckily nothing like the US where at the boarding gate there is a display with 10 or 20 names of passenger pending to get a seat assigned. I don't know how this can even be allowed or tolerated by customers.

goingnowhere

The US situation is a bit crazy but its hard really to fly direct so lots of connections and messing around if misconnects happen. The real game at the gate is the upgrade waitlist, folks in economy who have seats who are bumped to business which in turn gets the waitlisters home.

In 6 years of work flights wth Aer Lingus touching almost the entire route network, I've never had any issues nor have any of my colleagues. Always been looked after, even to the extent of being proactively moved to earlier flights at LHR free of charge as my booked flight was going to be late

I've never seen issues at the gate either which would suggest overbooking.

Best advice is check in online as soon as it opens, once you have a seat assignment and boarding card, unless there is an aircraft change (A321 to A320 or ATR72 to ATR42) you are flying.

Bob24

goingnowhere wrote: »

In 6 years of work flights wth Aer Lingus touching almost the entire route network, I've never had any issues nor have any of my colleagues. Always been looked after, even to the extent of being proactively moved to earlier flights at LHR free of charge as my booked flight was going to be late

I've never seen issues at the gate either which would suggest overbooking.

Same here, never seem it happen or hear of anyone being affected.

I actually didn't think they were overbooking at all until seeing this post and googling it. And it really seem like it is a very rate instance.

As a matter of fact I've been flying a good bit in Europe and Asia and never witnessed people being waiting for seats at the gate due to overbooking. Whereas I've been to North America much less and I have seen it happen quite a few times including once where I was one of the impacted passengers. So it's really not something I would be worried about here in Europe or when I go to Asia.

L1011

Bob24 wrote: »

It says here that Ryanair never overbooks and that Aer Lingus does it very rarely and if a passenger is impacted they will be informed at the point of checking-in.

So it seems like there is zero chance of overbooking with Ryanair, and "remote in the extreme" chances with Aer Lingus knowing that once you have a seat number assigned you are 100% safe.

Luckily nothing like the US where at the boarding gate there is a display with 10 or 20 names of passenger pending to get a seat assigned. I don't know how this can even be allowed or tolerated by customers.

Ryanair overbook

The display in the US is generally the upgrade list and is every passenger with status on the FFP

Locker10a

Bob24 wrote: »

It says here that Ryanair never overbooks and that Aer Lingus does it very rarely and if a passenger is impacted they will be informed at the point of checking-in.

So it seems like there is zero chance of overbooking with Ryanair, and "remote in the extreme" chances with Aer Lingus knowing that once you have a seat number assigned you are 100% safe.

Luckily nothing like the US where at the boarding gate there is a display with 10 or 20 names of passenger pending to get a seat assigned. I don't know how this can even be allowed or tolerated by customers.

This has been done to death on these forums before but Ryanair 100% overbook.
Ryanair staff have even shared photographic evidence showing manifests for Ryanair flights, clearly overbook.
It goes without saying these days, you can't trust the Ryanair "PR" publications, if you can even call it PR!
Anyway Ryanair would be fools not to over book, how else would they achieve a 95% occupancy rate!

Jamie2k9

If he was late to the gate technically he could be refused boarding and the seat given to someone else.

Chances are it could well of been a transit passenger who missed an earlier connection.

billie1b

Locker10a wrote: »

I'm not 100% sure, the likes of Ryanair only allow online check in so I think it either double books a seat it says on the boarding pass to seek assistance at gate. Where an open seat will be handwritten on.
It should be mentioned that Airlines are very very clever with over booking and have done huge analysis on how and when to do it. E.g Both Aer Lingus and Ryanair offer multiple flights per day in DUB - London, they know from their own data that a certain amount of booked seats will go empty due to business meetings being cancelled or changed etc. So there will always be passengers on these flights who don't turn up. So they will sell some seats twice and 99% of the time there'll be no issue at all

With Ryanair if your flight is overbooked and all seats are taken when you’re checking in, the app issues you you’re boarding pass with a 00 on it for your seat and a check in boarding card is issued with Seat 0 on it, people have this idea that its only flights multiple times a day that are overbooked, I can say now that it’s not, it ranges from flights that have 4-5 departures a day , 1 departure per day, 1-3 departures per week etc etc.
The way it works with the overbooking is, when you scan either boarding pass and you have a Seat 0 or 00 boarding pass the scanner throws back an error to the gate agent, it’s then that the pax is informed that the flight is overbooked and they were one of the last to check in and have to wait to see if there will be seats available, this is only of course if they weren’t informed at check in first if they were checking a bag etc. Most times all is ok but 3-4 times out of 10 you have problems.