Wales Online is today reporting on an incident which happened on Vuelings Palma flight on the 11th august 2015 where cancer patient Rhian Journeaux, 45 was told to get off the plane as there was no seat for her.
Rhian had booked for herself and her family to travel to Palma following chemotherapy treatment earlier in the year.
An apparent fault with Vueling’s online system meant Rhian’s check in was not processed. However when she arrived at Cardiff Airport she was allowed to board the flight only to find out no seat had been reserved for her and there were no spare seats on the flight apart from one that was booked for extra room.
She was removed from the aircraft and returned to the gate when initially Vueling staff refused to allow Rhian to have the seat and informed her it was a “more expensive seat” than the one she had booked. However the passenger who had booked it for extra room did allow her to join her family on the flight by giving her the seat. Rhian told Wales Online: “I’m not very confident at the moment and my hair’s still growing back. I was made to feel like a criminal and I was traumatised by the whole thing.”
Rhian was informed that because the airline had oversold tickets and, unless passengers choose their seats, their ticket is then sold to someone else, meaning there are too many passengers for the amount of seats. A common practice especially with low-fares airlines.
Wales Online have asked Vueling airlines for a comment who have not responded.
(Source Article – http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/cancer-patient-was-told-family-9912901 )
A small correction: Overbooking is most common with classical and so called “old styled expensive airlines” like Lufthansa or BA. Lufthansa leaves hundreds of passenger helpless back every single day.
This is because they have many transit-passengers and they expect a certain amout of passengers arriving on late planes so the do heavily oversell.
Also onl airlines do oversell if the ticket price is much higher then the compensation to EG 26/2004. This mean that Lufthansa will most likely oversell as their Last-Minut-Prices are mostl over 300€ while Ryanair will not oversell at all.
For airlines like Ryanair or wizzair overselling would mean a loss as many passengers even Las-Minute just pay arround 50€ to 150€ but have the right for 250€ compensation plus hotel and alternative transport.
So its mostly a problem of expensive airlines like Lufthansa, BA, Air France and yes Vueling. Vueling has no Service – is No Frills but not at all Low_Fare. Vueling is very expensive, too. Or ahs any one seen normal flight prices like 9,99€ there?
So booking Ryanair or Wizzair means you are save to arrive and not been kicked out. The Low-Fare-Companys have the much better customer service as they normaly transport you on time. Ryanair for example is one of Worlds most punctual Airlines while you see at enarly every airport delayed or cancelld Lufthansa flights (strikes, planes who are not corectly maintained like D-AXGA from Lufthansa daughter Eurowings)