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Aviation History
1971
1971 - 0091.PDF
84 AIR TRANSPORT... unusually high load factors in many areas as a result. "You know that nights are sometimes 'oversold,' " the memorandum runs. "There is however no point in volun teering this information to passengers. In the long term, such admissions will damage BOAC's competitive position. The use of the term overbooking is to be avoided at all costs whenever passengers are required to wait for seat numbers. " 'Oversales' do not happen by accident and occur for the best possible reason—to ensure our aircraft depart with full loads. How we achieve this situation is something we keep to ourselves. It is up to us to present the situation to passengers in terms which they may find more palatable, if not more acceptable. Communications or computer errors, problems with finalising seat plans and a wide variety of euphemisms can be employed to explain the delay in seating. As it will be self-evident to the intending passenger that some malfunction has occurred, obviously there is no point in pretending otherwise. To talk about 'overbooking' however is not only damaging to BOAC's competitive position but in the final analysis may be both inaccurate and untrue. "It is in everyone's interests that our flights operate with full loads. If in attaining this objective a difficult relation ship arises at close-out it is our responsibility to employ ingenuity in retaining as much goodwill as is possible. This will not be achieved by blaming the other bloke for over booking." If the passenger denied a booked seat feels that he has a grievance, he is unlikely to find a remedy in the law of contract. The conditions attached to most tickets would appear to preclude it; the ticket of one major lata carrier, for example, contains this passage: "Carrier undertakes to use its best efforts to carry the passenger and baggage with reasonable dispatch. Times shown in timetables or elsewhere are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Carrier may without notice substitute alternate carriers or aircraft, and may alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket in case of necessity. Schedules are subject to change without notice. Carrier assumes no responsibility for making connections." In Britain the official feeling on the topic appears to be that it is a matter for airline management, and that it is not up to any Government department to intervene. Equally it is true to say that the practice is deprecated by officials. The reason why no official position is adopted however by the Department of Trade and Industry is that the responsibility for supervision, so far as British carriers are concerned, is delegated to the Air Transport Licensing Board, and that the department would not want to risk prejudging a possible appeal. The ATLB has of course a consumer-protection function with respect to British (but not to foreign) airlines. Section 4 of the Civil Aviation (Licensing) Act, 1960, charges the ATLB with the duty of considering "any SHUTTLE PROMOTIONAL FROM February 1 Eastern will introduce off-peak reduced fares on the North-east Corridor Shuttle for families, young people and servicemen. The service will continue to provide guaranteed seating without reservations between Boston, LaGuardia, Newark and Washington, but at off-peak times the above categories of passenger will be able to travel at a 50.per cent discount. The Shuttle is expensive to operate because back-up aircraft and crews have to be provided, but "these new fares should bring in more revenue for Eastern during the slack periods in what was previously a service aimed essentially at the business traveller. The new fare rates will expire on July 31, but Eastern should be able to assess its success before that date. FLIGHT International, 21 January 1971 representation from any person relating to, or to facilities in connection with, air transport services by means of air craft registered in the United Kingdom. . . ." The Act gives the board powers to revoke licence following such a repre sentation—"if at any time the board are satisfied, whether or not any application or representation has been made to them for the purpose, that it is right and proper so to do, they may revoke, suspend or vary any air service licence." The board appears never to have passed an opinion on the matter or heard any representation which has led to action being taken against any airline. It might be argued that this absence of case history indicates the absence of a problem; it might equally be argued that if there were no problem, or if the customers never objected, the BOAC staff instruction would never have been written. It is more likely that the average passenger is entirely unaware of his rights of complaint to the ATLB. Even if he were familiar with the law, he might conclude that his representation would be unlikely to result in any worth while result. There would be no hope of any monetary compensation, for example. Although the ATLB has a consumer-protection function, it tends to be exercised only passively where subsidiary issues are involved—probably of necessity because of the limitations imposed by the board's resources. In the USA the Civil Aeronautics Board is rather more active, and in respect of overbooking has introduced its own rules. These provide for compensation for the traveller who is denied comparable transport within a reasonable space of time. Airlines tend to throw the overbooking ball back into the customer's court, giving the "no-show" as the cause of the problem. There must be many passengers who would have no serious objections to some penalty scheme if it could be implemented, especially if they got in return the assurance of an end to overbooking. But the argument that "no-shows," because they are the direct cause, are therefore the justification of overbooking falls flat on its face, because it assumes that the man who is guilty of "no-showing" is the same individual as the one who gets overbooked. There is in practice of course no reason why he should be. In other words, the airlines take it out of one set of their passengers for the misdeeds of an entirely different set. One way of ensuring fair treatment of passengers is to improve consumer-protection services—something of a fond hope in Britain these days, now that the Conservative Government has axed the Consumer Council in order to save £240,000 a year. At least we still have the privately run Consumers' Association and its indefatigable magazine Which? We also have however every right to demand that the new Civil Aviation Authority, to be set up next year, should not only assume the present duties of the ATLB in this field but should improve on them and institute a pro gramme of active and inquisitive surveillance of the way passengers are treated by airlines; and, come to that, that they should publish the findings of their researches, as the CAB is doing at the moment. The CAA should be a fair but aggressive guardian of the consumer's interests. HS Airbus Visit A party of French Deputies visited the Hawker Siddeley factory at Chester last week for a progress report on the A-300B. The party had previously visited the major French and German Airbus production factories at Toulouse and Hamburg. Southampton Noise Research A three-year grant totalling £31,357 for research into the reduction of aircraft noise has been awarded to the Acoustics Group of the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at Southampton University by the Science Research Council. The study will involve methods of suppressing the high-frequency noise (predominant during the approach and landing) emitted from the fans and inlet ducts of turbofans.
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