Time to call out the airlines on their policy of bumping passengers

The issue of air travellers being denied their contractual right to passage that they paid for — and which has been approved right through the boarding process — has been in the news a lot these days. As it should be.

I happen to have family travelling abroad right now, and I'd like to see them arrive home safely and on time, considering the rather hefty cash layout we made for their tickets. So the issue is top-of-mind for me, too.

It's rather odd that journalists have been so willing to accept the airlines' assertion that their policies of overselling seats on air flights should be normal. For every story of weeping passengers being pushed out the door of jetliners, we read the obligatory paragraphs explaining that overselling is a normal business practice, and that overall it helps keep ticket prices down.

That, of course, is pure baloney.

Every oversold seat has already been paid for. And some of them twice. Where is the financial loss to the airline when a fully-paid-for seat is left empty at the last minute because a passenger hasn't shown up for their fight?

The airline already has its money, in full. Unless there has been a cancellation within the rules of issuing the ticket, the airline keeps it money. In fact, airline profits would go through the roof if entire flights could take off empty, with no fuel costs, baggage or service costs incurred for actual passengers.

Do you see a disconnect here? If it is mine, I'd like a real journalist to explain that to me. If it is not, I can suggest the means for airlines to keep ticket prices low — or even reduce them. By replacing the policy of bumping passengers, with a policy of fully nonrefundable tickets.

Have you ever heard of people buying tickets well in advance to a concert or theatre performance, who then cannot attend for whatever reason — and then getting their money back? If you can't transfer the tickets to someone else, you kiss your money goodby. Happens all the time.

Airline tickets — for very good reasons — are not transferable. They should also be absolutely nonrefundable, except through an insurance policy, which pays the cost for you, if you choose to pay extra for flight insurance.

That being the case, airlines are well able to stop selling tickets to all flights the instant the last seat is paid for. No refunds, no transfers. Nobody gets bumped. 

An empty seat on a flight is therefore just extra profit for the airline on that flight.

We all know that some people buy tickets and don't show up for their flights. That's what standby tickets are for. It's also what some genius earning a seven-figure salary, plus bonuses, approved overbooking for.

Airlines don't want to expressly bump you off a flight you paid for. But they do want to sell your seat on the flight twice, ruin your travel plans — all for a time-limited nontransferable voucher for a discount to do it all over again.

Why has no one called them on this? This practice in any other industry would be called fraud, and court cases would rightly ensue.

I would like to see proof that an empty seat on an air flight represents a loss of income to the carrier. It can't. The carrier already has their money, and if there is any cash recovery to be made, it should be made to the passenger through an insurance company.

An oversold seat is just double-dipping. Full stop.

Canada already has some of the most expensive airline tickets in the world, mile for mile. That's because Canadian airport landing fees are among the highest in the world.

But there's no justification for airlines to oversell their flights. Simply stop selling tickets the moment the flight is fully booked — and paid for.

If mistakes are made and passengers need to be bumped, each passenger should get his or her money back and a free seat on the next available flight — by any airline — to their destination, plus a cash incentive to volunteer to be bumped.

Cost of doing business.

It is amazing that people pay big money to travel by air, and are expected to act like chumps at the poor planning and poor customer service of airlines.

It is likewise amazing that we all are expected to believe fraudulent double-dipping ticket sales should be accepted as a normal business practice.

To save the world, save the cyclists

A book review: 

Title: How Cycling Can Save the World

By Peter Walker

Published by TarcherPerigee

Of course cycling cannot save the world. The question of that is far more complex, involving getting past climate change denial, economic and social inequality, a looming cost-of-health-care crisis and the built-in resistance of city planners, traffic engineers and elected leaders.

Even so, respected Guardian columnist Peter Walker makes a convincing and easily-read case for leaving our collective salvation to billions of people worldwide riding bikes.

More than half of all people now live in cities, most of which are clogged with motor traffic and the pollution of motor traffic. Too many people spend too much time sitting at a desk, burning an ever-larger portion of their incomes supporting the vehicle they feel is needed to get them to work, and their children to school. And it is killing them early.

Walker opens his book with an exhaustive look at alarming studies into the cost of our modern sedentary lifestyle. He suggests health officials are not kept awake nights worrying about the cost of early deaths due to sitting around too much: obesity, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer's, etc. (these add up to roughly the combined populations of Alberta and Saskatchewan every year, about equal to global deaths caused by tobacco). Rather, they worry about the multi-trillion-dollar cost of morbidity from these diseases — the spending of health resources needed to keep these sick people alive.

Walker references the Barnet Graph of Doom, which was drawn to determine the date when health care costs in a county in northern England would consume every dollar of all taxes raised — in their case, 2022.

If these diseases could be cured and prevented in pill form, the inventor would gain an instant Nobel Prize, and reap billions instantly from selling it. Yet that “silver bullet” (as designated by the U.S. association of cardiac surgeons) already exists virtually for free, available to all, in the form of active transportation.

Cycling is, after all, active transportation in its most efficient form.

To bring that to a local perspective, read the letters and articles in the paper regarding the provincial government's denial of a cardiac unit for the Red Deer hospital. The argument could be made that if a tiny fraction of the cost of such a unit had been made in better street planning and cycling infrastructure in just the last decade, Red Deer might not need one. Ditto expanding our costly dialysis services.

From health, Walker moves to issues of social inclusion. The more opportunities that low-income people have for movement in cities, the more our cities become truly inclusive. When cycling moves from being a hobby for wealthy lycra-clad weirdos to a genuine alternative for people moving through their daily lives, the happier, more free and democratic a city becomes.

This is particularly true, Walker notes, for women, children and the elderly.

From there Walker moves to issues of safety. There is that radioactive issue of helmet laws — as one city councillor noted, touch it and you die. But Walker's research contends that if you think helmets and high-visibility clothing are the answer to a perceived (and erroneous) view that cycling is dangerous, you have asked the wrong question.

The safest place on earth to ride is in Amsterdam, where you will see very little high-viz lycra, and very few helmets. Check that against Australia and New Zealand where strict helmet laws exist simply to keep people off their bikes.

Helmets do not make a mass cycling culture safe. Separation from cars, properly planned intersections and thoroughly connected bike routes do.

How safe is safe? In places where this has been studied the most, basically, safe is safe where you can let an eight-year-old ride to school and back, unaccompanied.

And where these are built, even their most ardent champions were amazed at how quickly cycling as a portion of total commutes exploded. As in trips doubling twice or four times over in a few years.

Walker noted boroughs where cyclists daily lifted bikes over barriers on uncompleted sections of bike routes still under construction. That phenomenon is happening today in Red Deer on 55^th Street east, where the paved bike lane ends 20 metres short of its intersection with the new bike route heading south on 20^th Ave. Dozens of bike tracks can be seen in the mud, and were there even when a barrier was set up last summer closing the last kilometre of finished pavement, short as it ended up being.

I'm a biased reviewer, and I'm not sure cycling can save the world all by itself. But I am convinced the stubborn and short-sighted attitudes that raise barriers to people feeling safe in exercising their health and economic choices will probably doom it.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca