Got a ticket? Sorry, plane's full Imagine getting to the airport with your family at 5am, in good time for your 6.30 flight to Cape Town, and after a long wait in the check-in queue you're told that there's no room.And not just for you, but for three other families as well - all Durban teenagers and their parents on their way to the One Direction concert.Among them at the King Shaka Airport on Wednesday morning were Paul and Heidi Wiggins and their 14-year-old daughter, Nina. They and another family had booked and paid for their tickets on Kulula's website last May and been allocated seats on a British Airways flight."So Comair had our money for almost nine months and we got to the airport in good time, but we were simply told we couldn't get on the plane," said Heidi Wiggins. "The ground crew were totally unapologetic and unsympathetic."Overbooking is a global airline practice, intended to prevent empty seats. Or, as Comair puts it, "in order to supplement the generally low profit margins achieved in a tough and competitive industry".When they get their predictions wrong, as in this case, ticket-carrying passengers get "bumped off", which to airline employees is fairly routine but for affected passengers is a nasty shock.In the end, the families flew in two directions to get to Cape Town. Comair got them onto a BA flight to Johannesburg, telling them they could fly to Cape Town from there, but when they got there, they discovered the Johannesburg staff was not expecting them."I couldn't believe the Durban staff had done that," Wiggins said. "The least they could have done was make things easier for us by making a plan for us."They finally made it to Cape Town on a 9.30am BA flight. Comair compensated them with vouchers for one-way Durban-to-Johannesburg flights, which don't cover airport taxes. One had missed a tour of a wine farm; another a doctor's appointment made months earlier.The Consumer Protection Act has a lot to say about such a scenario. (See sidebar)I asked Comair why that flight was overbooked, given that it was the day of the One Direction concert, and as there was no concert in Durban, thousands of KZN fans would be flying to Cape Town."On investigation it appears that we had a system error which resulted in a higher than usual overbooking percentage," said Kulula and British Airways' head of marketing Shaun Pozyn."We sincerely apologise to the customers who were affected and inconvenienced, and are currently working on how to rectify this to ensure it doesn't happen again."Customers who were affected by the overbooking were re-routed and compensated."On the claims that the Comair ground staff were unapologetic, rude and failed to liaise with their counterparts in Johannesburg about the "bumped-off" passengers, Pozyn said: "We pride ourselves on providing a great, memorable travel experience for our customers and therefore we are investigating the manner in which the airport handled the situation and how we could improve, as well as ensure that there is better communication between the various airports."To our knowledge, no Comair passengers missed the One Direction concert as a result of being bumped off a flight."We will most certainly look at compensation [including] paying for any additional costs the customer may incur."Good to know.Overbooking - what the CPA has to sayIf a company accepts a reservation to supply you with goods or services on a specific date and time, and then fails to do so because of lack of capacity or stock, and they can't provide something in its place of better quality or class, they must refund whatever you paid them, with interest, AND compensate you for costs directly incidental to their breach of contract.But the firm doesn't have to do either if it offers you "comparable goods or services" and you accept the offer, or if they make you such an offer and you refuse it.If the firm' s failure to honour your booking was due to circumstances beyond its control, and it took "reasonable" steps to inform you of the problem as soon as it was practical to do so, the company must refund you, but it doesn' t have to compensate you for your direct costs as well."Circumstances beyond the company's control" does not apply if the shortage of airline seats or accommodation, for example, arose out of the company's failure to "adequately and diligently" carry out its business...