After United Fallout, Airlines Are Bumping Fewer Passengers

Domestic airlines are bumping passengers off flights at the lowest rate since 1995, according to a new federal report — a decline that may have been accelerated by the fallout from an April episode in which a man was dragged off a United Airlines flight.

The 12 domestic carriers that report data on the number of passengers who are involuntarily denied boarding posted a bumping rate of 0.44 per 10,000 passengers during the second quarter of 2017, according to the Transportation Department. That was the lowest quarterly rate within historical records dating back more than two decades, officials said in a statement.

By comparison, the airlines posted a bumping rate of 0.62 per 10,000 passengers in both the second quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. The previous low had been 0.50, during the third quarter of 2002.

Bumping rates among the airlines that report their data have been trending downward since at least 2012, a review of the federal reports show. And although airline officials offered varying explanations for the most recent decrease, a United Airlines spokeswoman said the company had “absolutely learned” from the April 9 dragging episode.

“The effort that our team has put toward really focusing on our customers is evidenced by these numbers,” the spokeswoman, Megan McCarthy, said in a telephone interview. “We will continue to do that work and make improvements.”

Ms. McCarthy said 957 passengers were involuntarily denied boarding in April, “a very challenging month.”

But at the end of April, weeks after the dragging episode, the airline put several new customer-focused initiatives in place, including one aimed at decreasing overbooking and another allowing United employees to offer up to $10,000 in travel certificates to those willing to volunteer to change flights.

In May, Ms. McCarthy said 61 passengers were bumped; in June, United bumped 46. The airline expects the number of involuntarily bumped passengers to remain low, she said.

The new federal study, the Air Travel Consumer Report, also showed a sharp decrease in the number of passengers involuntarily bumped by Southwest Airlines in April, May and June. The airline posted a bumping rate of 0.64 per 10,000 passengers during the quarter, compared with 1.07 during the same period in 2016.

An airline spokeswoman said Southwest had rolled out a new reservations system on May 9 and had “stopped the practice of overselling flights, which contributed to the overall rate of decline in involuntary denied boardings.”

In a brief telephone interview, the spokeswoman, Melissa Ford, said the changes had been planned before the dragging episode.

Still, she said in a subsequent statement, “We are pleased that industry-denied boarding numbers are at an all-time low.”

JetBlue Airways’ bumping rate plummeted to 0.04 during the second quarter of 2017, compared with a rate of 0.91 during the same quarter in 2016.

But in a statement, the airline said the decline had nothing to do with a policy change.

“JetBlue has a longstanding customer-friendly policy to not oversell flights and we have remained committed to that policy since we launched our first flight in 2000,” the statement said. “The numbers in the D.O.T. reports reflect rare instances when our larger A321 aircraft were changed to smaller aircraft to accommodate unplanned operational needs.”

Indeed, there are many reasons — including the substitution of a smaller aircraft — that a passenger can be denied a seat. Over the years, it has not been uncommon for airlines to sell more tickets than they have seats. Typically, they try to get people to voluntarily change their plans. Only if there are no takers have the airlines resorted to a forced flight change.