Lack of empowerment. We don't empower employees to make decisions. To most companies, "delegation", means delegating tasks, when it should mean delegating responsibility. As a result the rule book rules and rule books can rarely cover all possible permutations and combinations of situations. The only real answer is to empower line employees, while at the same time giving them the tools (for example, simple guidelines on how to calculate a revenue impact) to make operating *decisions*, rather than blind adherence to a dusty rulebook from some managers office. Then there would be a recipe for "win-win" situations: company makes higher revenue by having a full-fare pax occupy a seat rather than be turned away, and the discount pax is happy to get there sooner. Not only does it make sense from a revenue standpoint but at the same time the company makes two customers happy. And happy customers often make repeat customers. It all boils down to that old aviation truth: butts in seats, planes in the air... Mike Gammon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis W Zeuch" <DZTOPS@aol.com> To: <AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU> Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 10:16 PM Subject: Re: Economics 101 > youre right---why do they do stuff like this? > Thats really nuts > Many times the later flights are overbooked and a psgr showing up for standby > on a half empty earlier flight saves the airline lots of problems overall. > Lots of positives and NO negatives at all that I know of. > > Why Why Why??????? >