Well Done Northwest Airlines

After railing on the airlines in a previous post, I feel that I have to give credit where credit is due for a solid idea from Northwest Airlines.  According to this post on the Freakonomics Blog, Northwest is changing the way they handle overbooked flights and crediting passengers willing to wait for a later flight.  Now, if you check in online before heading to the airport you will be notified if the flight has been overbooked and asked if you are interested in giving up your seat should they need volunteers.  If you answer yes, you will then be asked how much compensation you require for giving the seat up.  If the plane needs 10 seats to be volunteered they will take the 10th lowest offer and give that amount to those who bid at or below that price.

This is an interesting cost cutter for Northwest, and one that requires no decrease in customer service.  I would assume there is a cap on how high of an offer they will accept otherwise they would open themselves up to possible losses (imagine if NWA needed 3 seats and Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs were the only 3 that volunteered... their cost for wasted time would probably be a bit higher than the average flyer).  Most of the time, however, NWA will likely wind up spending less per seat than they would have with a flat rate given for volunteering.

This is a very smart, very common sense idea that could wind up paying dividends for the company... On the other hand I'm still an aairlineist (definition: one who does not believe that intelligent designers exist in the airline universe), so I assume it will take a few years before the savings can match the outrageous fees they paid their consultant to actually develop an original idea.