When an airline oversells a flight, it is making a conscious business decision that some passengers will be a no-show, allowing the company to maximize its profits and operate a flight as fully as possible. Nonetheless, on certain occasions, all travelers show up, and they find themselves without a seat, meaning the bumped passengers and the airline have to work out an arrangement, such as rebooking on a later service or remunerating with air travel vouchers or cash before the flight can depart. So, which airline oversells seats the most in the United States? Let’s find out.

Overselling seats

Radical Storage recently released a study in which it analyzes which airlines mishandle baggage and oversell seats the most in the United States.

The study pointed out American Airlines and its regional branch Envoy Air as the companies that most mishandle baggage.

Last year, American Airlines received the most reports of mishandled baggage, with over 466,000 items of luggage reported to have been lost, stolen, or damaged.

Meanwhile, Envoy Air had the largest number of mishandled bags per 1,000 in 2021, at nine. Envoy Air mishandled 81,476 of the 9,051,406 consumers that flew with the company.

While your luggage not making it to your destination can be frustrating, overselling seats is a practice that leaves many travelers extremely unhappy.

In 2021, 174,964 passengers in the United States were voluntarily or involuntarily denied boarding on the flights they had booked due to seats on the flights being overbooked.

A terrible experience

While approximately 94% of all the impacted passengers were given the option of not boarding the flight, around 10,648 were given no such option to volunteer, said Radical Storage. That means they were simply denied boarding.

Data analyzed showed that Southwest Airlines denied the most passengers in 2021. It denied the boarding of 34,355 passengers or about 94 per day. Approximately 4,017 were given no option as to whether they could or could not board.

Delta Air Lines was the second most likely airline to turn away passengers. It denied boarding of 27,417 passengers in 2021. Unlike Southwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines reported that all those denied boarding did so voluntarily.

Overall, 2.92 per 10,000 travelers were denied boarding by US airlines, with Skywest Airlines the most likely to deny customers a seat they have booked (6.42 per 10,000 passengers), followed by Republic Airways and Endeavor Air (6.21 per 10,000 passengers).

Meanwhile, Hawaiian Airlines kept overbooking to a minimum. In 2021, it only denied boarding of 31 passengers, the least among the 16 airlines studied and only under 1,000.

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Worrying data since 2019

Since 2019, Delta Air Lines has denied boarding to 158,554 passengers. Only four were not voluntary, according to the airline.

Close behind Delta is American Airlines, denying boarding of 154,202 passengers (11,338 involuntarily).

Overall, between 2019 and 2021, over 732,000 airline passengers have been denied boarding by US airlines, with 33,496 denied their seats involuntarily.

So how does an airline decide which passenger to bump?

When an airline asks for volunteers to give up their seats, there is the possibility of not having enough volunteers. When this occurs, the airline has the right to involuntarily bump passengers by following an established criteria.

For instance, you may be bumped if you were among the passengers that arrived at check-in at the latest. Other criteria are the fare paid by the passenger or the passenger’s frequent flyer status. However, the criteria cannot subject a passenger to any unjust or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage. For example, an airline could not lawfully use a passenger’s race or ethnicity as a criterion.

Have you ever been denied boarding a flight in the US? Was it voluntarily or involuntarily? Let us know in the comments below.