Few things are worse than braving the traffic to get to the airport, checking in, and taking off your shoes to go through security only to be told that your flight is full and that they might find room for you on the next one.
Depending on the airlines one flies, this can happen extremely rarely or become a fairly regular occurrence. Some people even voluntarily put themselves on airlines' volunteer lists to receive some travel credits or other compensation in exchange for the inconvenience.
Looking at the number of passengers denied boarding due to overbooking between April and June 2022, storage company Bounce identified Delta (DAL)-owned Endeavor Air as the airline most likely to bump passengers from booked flights.
Pick These Airlines To Avoid Getting Bumped
The regional airline based out of Minneapolis had a bump rate of 12.86 for every 10,000 passengers. In total, it bumped 4,270 between April and June while 3.3 million boarded the plane as planned.
"Although Endeavor Air has the most denied boardings per 10,000 passengers, the airline did not bump any passengers without their consent," reads the report. "All of the 4,270 bumped passengers on Endeavor Air flights from April to June 2022 voluntarily gave up their seats in exchange for compensation."
Two other regional airlines, Skywest (SKYW) and Republic Airways, took the second and third spots with respective bump rates of 9.15 and 8.61 for every 1,000 passengers. Frontier Airlines and Texas-based Envoy Air also scored high in the round-up of such last-minute changes.
The airline with the least number of passenger bumps was Hawaiian Airlines (HA) -- the airline associated with shuttling tourists to and from Hawaii had a boarding denial rate of 0.56 per 1,000 passengers between April and June. That's only 142 people bumped out of more than 2.5 million carried.
Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air and JetBlue Airways (JBLU) took a respective second and third place when it comes to the lowest number of bumpings.
"Allegiant Air, one of the primary ultra-low-cost airlines in the US, is one of the least likely airlines to bump passengers from their scheduled flights," reads the report. "Offering both low prices and seat security, the airline bumped 569 passengers voluntarily between April and June 2022. No passengers were involuntarily bumped."
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This is Why Airplane Travel is So Terrible in 2022
Even though getting bumped is a rare occurrence even for the airlines scoring highest on the list, the airline industry has been plagued with numerous problems since its emergence from the pandemic.
Many airlines have struggled to rehire workers laid off during the covid pandemic fast enough to meet skyrocketing demand -- during the summer, certain airports were instituting passenger caps to avoid crowding while Delta flew a passenger-free Airbus A330-200 filled with over 1,000 pieces of luggage separated from its owners from London to Detroit at the start of July.
While the situation has improved somewhat, many airlines are still struggling to hit the stride between demand, profitability, and enough staff to maintain satisfaction.
"Long delays and cancellations are likely grating on consumers' desire to travel while airlines toe a fine line between trying to grasp hold of the post-pandemic travel boom and preparing for the likely slowdown ahead as economic conditions deteriorate," Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Laura Hoy told CNBC.
