Missed Your Flights? Good Luck
Thursday, July 15, 2010 1:21:33 PM

In an expensive and sophisticated version of musical chairs, airlines are finding it a busy summer but cancelled flights are leaving few options for harried travelers who are finding they may wait overnight for the next plane.

"Planes are running so full that they don't have any spots," Tulsa resident Anne Green told the Denver Post as she waited between flights. "It's like a domino effect where you can't get another flight when something goes wrong."

US airlines cut capacity nearly 9 percent last year, taking planes out of service or using smaller planes on some routes in a scramble to better match the number of seats to customers. That was on top of a 6.7 percent capacity cut in 2008, according to industry figures.

The blame for belt-tightening has been placed on the economy, rising fuel prices and fewer passengers, according to the Air Transport Association.

As a result, load factors — the measure of how full planes are — are up. Since 2001, when airlines took a big hit from 9/11, the load factor for US carriers has risen from almost 70 percent to 81 percent in 2009.

Involuntary "bumping" — the result of oversold flights — also was up in the first quarter this year — 23,380 instances were reported to the Department of Transportation compared with 17,099 in the first quarter of 2009.

All that adds up to greater chances that passengers may not be rebooked on a flight later the same day, but quite possibly the next day.

"Capacity is generally down and load factors are generally up," said United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson. "But there is a great deal of thinking about what goes into how you cancel flights and how to inconvenience the least number of people."

The situation doesn't look like it will change soon.

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