Alaska Airlines improves denied boarding processes for guests and front-line staff

May 21, 2018

Alaska Airlines is leveraging Volantio’s Yana platform to streamline the process of managing voluntary denied boardings, leading to strong positive feedback from guests and front-line staff.
As a first step, Yana is helping Alaska to increase the number of volunteers on at-risk flights, amplifying the channels of communication and reaching 100% of direct bookings. Yana is also enabling dynamic messaging capabilities to flexible passengers, and rules-based targeting of flights.

Launched initially in Boise, Idaho, the platform has now been rolled out systemwide.

“Our feedback has been great, a higher percentage of guests are happily volunteering,” said Charity Crossett, a Guest Services Supervisor. “In the past there was frustration on both parts, but now these volunteers are coming to us, and they are excited.”

Ms. Crossett continued that the feedback from front-line staff has also been very positive: “The process before gave anxiety to our agents here. It’s been really nice having the new system out.”

“Post-booking revenue and capacity management is the next frontier, and I'm proud that Alaska Airlines is leading the way,” said Kevin Ger, Alaska Airlines’ VP of Pricing and Revenue Management. “Whether it be for denied boarding management, IROPs, down gauge resolution, or spill management, having a machine learning powered tool that can dynamically re-accommodate passengers, in an automated fashion, will be a big win for guests and for our front-line staff. It will also be a big win for our bottom line.”