Report: American Airlines is Second to None at Bumping Passengers

According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, American Airlines has involuntarily bumped more passengers this year than all other U.S. airlines.

Combined.

Involuntary bumping occurs for several reasons, most notably when flights are overbooked and not enough passengers volunteer to be re-booked, or when seats are needed for pilots and flight attendants who need to get to a certain destination to continue working.

But with the holiday travel season coming up, fliers using American might want to be concerned based on past statistics. In the three-month period between July and September, reporter Kyle Arnold found American involuntarily denied boarding to more than 3,400 passengers.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein told the Morning News that part of the reason is that American has 24 grounded Boeing 737 Max jets and, obviously, 16 more it was expecting by the end of this year that it also cannot use.

“We definitely want to drive down the number of involuntary denied boardings since we know it has an impact on our customers,” Feinstein said.

“Airlines shouldn’t have to bump passengers at all,” said William McGee, an aviation adviser with Consumer Reports, said. “It’s not a passenger problem; it’s an airline problem.”