Let’s start the week off with a riddle. Why were 19 passengers bumped off a flight after boarding when none of them did anything wrong…nor did the airline?
19 Passengers Bumped. AFTER Flight Had Already Boarded!
We often see passengers bumped due to oversell situations (more seats sold than are available onboard). Sometimes we see passengers bumped when there is reason to believe they are intoxicated. But that is the not the only reason passengers may get bumped…
On an EasyJet Airbus A320 flight from César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport (ACE) in Spain to Liverpool (LIV), not one, not two, but 19 passengers were bumped. But why?
There were four factors at play:
- Heavy aircraft
- Short runway
- Excessive heat
- Windy conditions
But in short, the plane was too heavy, despite not being full.
To incentivize volunteers and avoid the unsavory process of removing people against their, EasyJet offered passengers 500EUR each to remain overnight and fly to England the following the day.
The incentive worked: 19 volunteers were found.
I appreciate the way the captain of the flight kept passengers informed. A passenger recorded how the captain explained the situation. While it is a tad scary to consider a plane that may have been too heavy to take off (imagine if they had proceeded anyway and the plane was unable to lift off…), I appreciate how clearly the issue was explained, which no doubt encouraged volunteers.
“Because there are so many of you, it’s a pretty heavy aircraft we’ve got today. That heavy aircraft, combined with a fairly short runway here in Lanzarote and some winds which aren’t completely favorable at the moment, mean that with the current environmental conditions here in Lanzarote, the aircraft is too heavy at the moment to depart.
“Now, I’ve been sat with Tom, my senior first officer in the flight deck,” he said. “We’re very experienced with this. We’ve done this before. We’ve been doing our very best to make an attempt as safely–obviously with safety our number one priority–safely as possible.
“There’s no way with the current wind conditions, the environmental conditions here in Lanzarote, that we can make this aircraft get airborne at the moment. As I say, a combination of factors, it’s very hot, that doesn’t help, the wind isn’t fantastic, the direction’s not great, that’s not helping either.
“If possible, I’d like to ask for up to potentially 20 volunteers to choose not to fly to Liverpool tonight. If anybody does want to do that, if anybody does want to volunteer, there will of course be an incentive for you to do that.”
The flight eventually departed nearly two hours late with 19 fewer passengers than had originally boarded.
CONCLUSION
EasyJet paid 500EUR each (plus meals and accommodations) to 19 passengers to voluntarily bump themselves from flight U23364 and travel the next day due to Liverpool to unsavory weather conditions in Lanzarote that made takeoff with a full load too dangerous.
This is not the first such occurrence, suggesting EasyJet may want to sell fewer seats on this flight to avoid having to bump so many people.
image: Lanzarote Airport Spotters Froup / Facebook
Wow! He asked for 20 but got 19. I know it’s not an exact science but that would be enough to make me volunteer to be number 20.
Same thing happened on my DCA-DEN flight this past Thursday on United. They unfortunately didnt send the 737-800 with the specific short field performance ability that day, and they had to ask 20 people to volunteer to be bumped even though it wasnt even a full flight. At the end of the day, they didnt take all 20, but they seemed to take a lot.
Years ago around Christmas I was on a United Express CRJ-700 from Dulles to Colorado Springs. It was 2 days before Christmas, it was full, and they announced that they needed 20 people to get off the plane, that they couldnt rebook passengers until AFTER Christmas because everything was full, and that there were weight/ weather issues, so the plane couldnt go full. Naturally, nobody volunteered, so they made an announcement that they would remove people based on some combination of fare paid and status, and that if, during boarding, there was a beep, you would be asked to step aside and be rebooked. Crying, absolute pandemonium, and a terrible experience. Misery at the gate.
These things happen.
“19 Passengers Voluntarily Bumped Themselves From One Flight. Can You Guess Why?”
Fixed the title for you. Yes yes, I know, it is less intentionally clickbaity, but still.
At the end of June, I had a Delta flight go up to $2,000 voluntary denied boarding for ATL-VPS (which is all of 45 minutes wheels up to wheels down) because a thunderstorm disruption earlier in that day forced an equipment swap to a 737 with a slightly smaller seat configuration.
Extra heavy travel day because the next week was the 4th of July weekend and next available flight was 36 hours out. Or alternately you take the first free hotel night and then rent a car for the six hour drive down to VPS. If we hadn’t been coming off a long haul flight and up for 20 hours at that point, it would have been really tempting.
I flew to MIA-DOM with a heavy E175 in the rain, and they bumped 16 off that tiny aircraft.
I doubt a good solution is for Easyjet to book fewer passengers regularly. Likely that it was a rare day where winds were not in the prevailing direction, perhaps even a crosswind, with excessive heat. Should American book fewer passengers daily out of PHX on a given flight because once in awhile during the summer when the temp hits 120 degrees they need to bump some? Or winter jetstreams make east to west coast US flights bump or take a fuel stop? Sounds like this was handled perfectly, safely, and professionally. The revenue of selling those seats everyday more than offsets the compensation of bumping once in a blue moon.
Meh, I’ve seen 20 people off of a RJ because it was raining at the Central California destination and the runway was too short.
Has been happening in Vegas recently with the heat.
This is not so unusual on the islands in the eastern Atlantic, the worst of the lot being Funchal on Madeira.
I bet it was a lot easier to find volunteers willing to stay in Lanzarote for another night than if a similar situation arose going the other direction…
I was on a flight out of JFK to Dallas on Delta and they wanted to bump 3 people who had already boarded because of the same issue.