Dr. Dao's Past Has Nothing to Do with What Happened to Him, FFS!

[Stonepounder]

55. A couple of things from a former 'road warrior'.

1. It is quite possible that 400K passengers were bumped (not removed) from flights last year. There is a problem in the airline industry that they refuse to fix. Overbooking. I have read somewhere (and the number is actually irrelevant) that flights get overbooked up to 50%. That is because you don't have to actually pay for your ticket until you use it (on most airlines). So there is no penalty to booking a flight and then just not showing up. So, if airlines only booked the actual number of seats available they would end up with planes half full.

2. Sometimes more folks show up for a flight than there are seats because of the need to overbooking and the airline computers guess wrong. In every single case of overbooking that I have ever seen, there is an announcement in the boarding lounge that the flight is oversold and the boarding agent starts what amounts to an auction to get passengers to voluntarily give up their seats in exchange for some form of compensation. Usually the offer of $600-$800 in travel vouchers and (if needed) a hotel room for the night is enough to get people to volunteer. Rarely the airline has to go higher - up to $1000 (I only saw it go to $1200 once).
Never have a seen a passenger involuntarily removed from a flight after boarding unless it was for some reason other than overbooking (like being drunk).

3. In Kentucky doctors have a real problem because there is a so-called 'heroin epidemic' going on and doctors who aren't exceedingly careful to dot their i's and cross their t's can end up losing their license. My GP regularly gets audited by the feds and the state to make sure they don't think he is over-prescribing narcotics. In reality in Ky it is far easier to get your drugs on the street. There are folks who make a nice living driving to Florida on a regular basis, hitting the pain clinics which cluster at the border, loading up on prescriptions, getting the pills at the pharmacies that cluster next to the pain clinics and driving back to Ky. You can drive to Fl, load up on pills and drive back in two days and make $5000 or more a trip.