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U.S. NEWS Wednesday 9 august 2017
US airlines bump fewer passengers after dragging backlash

can be offered to give up duced bumping since the and Delta Air Lines. Spirit
a seat. April incident. United boot- Airlines had the highest rate
Passengers still get ed 1,964 passengers in the of booting passengers, al-
bumped, however. Besides first six months of 2017, with though Southwest Airlines,
instances in which airlines more in the second quar- a much bigger carrier,
sell too many seats, passen- ter than the first. However, bumped the most people,
gers may get booted when McCarthy said, bumpings 2,642 in six months. United’s
a mechanical breakdown dropped from 957 in April rate exactly matched in
causes an airline to use a to 61 in May and 46 in June. the industry average.
smaller aircraft, or when The Transportation Depart- United, JetBlue, Delta and
the plane’s weight must be ment did not provide a Southwest all convinced
reduced for safe takeoff. monthly breakdown. more passengers to give
In this Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016 photo, passenger jets stack up United Airlines spokeswom- Travelers were least likely up their seats than they
over Reagan National Airport, in Washington. an Megan McCarthy said to be bumped on JetBlue had in the same period a
(AP Photo/J. David Ake) the carrier has sharply re- Airways, Hawaiian Airlines year ago.q

By DAVID KOENIG
AP Airlines Writer
DALLAS (AP) — Following
widespread outrage over
a passenger who was vio-
lently dragged off an over-
booked plane, U.S. airlines
are bumping customers at
the lowest rate in at least
two decades.
The Transportation Depart-
ment said Tuesday that just
one in every 19,000 pas-
sengers was kicked off an
overbooked flight in the
first six months of this year.
That’s the lowest rate since
the government started
keeping track in 1995.
The biggest decline took
place between April and
June, partly because air-
lines began paying many
more passengers to give
up their seats.
Airlines have routinely over-
booked flights for years in
the expectation that some
passengers won’t show
up. When a flight is over-
booked, airlines typically
offer travel vouchers to en-
courage a few passengers
to take a later flight.
That practice backfired in
April when United employ-
ees, whose offers of vouch-
ers were ignored, asked
Chicago airport officers to
help remove four people
from a United Express flight
to make room for airline
employees commuting to
their next flight. A 69-year-
old man was dragged
forcibly down the airplane
aisle and other passengers
captured the spectacle on
camera phones, turning
the incident into a public-
relations disaster for United.
Since then, United and oth-
er large U.S. airlines have
introduced new measures
to reduce overbooking,
and raised the maximum
amount that passengers