Avoid Being Bumped from Flights?
 

I'm a little concerned about our r/t non-stop flights from BWI to SJU this week and next. Both flights show no available coach seats. This makes me wonder if the flights are oversold, and if so, how do they determine who gets bumped off? Latest arriving at the gate? Booked with FF points? is there anything I can do to avoid being bumped? Thanks.

Sorry - Just came across this site posted by someone else recently:

http://www.bumptracker.com/

Thanks anayway.

They will usually ask for volunteers first and offer cash/vouchers. If you don't want to get bumped, don't volunteer. Involuntary bumps are very rare.

Seat maps are not good indicator of what's going on.

1.Airline hold back certain number of seats for airport control and they will show as occupied when they are not.

2.There are always no-shows, misconnects, etc.

The only way to know for sure if the flight is oversold is to look at fare class inventory. If they are all zeroed out then there is a chance the flight may need to bump few people, but again it's only a chance. (look at #2)

If you don't want to be bumped do as the previous poster advized, just don't volunteer and showing up early is always good too.

OTOH, if you are tempted with the bump offer make sure it's either a voucher or cash, not a free ticket. Free tickets have a bad history of usibility. Blackout dates, special fare bucket only, etc. Vouchers just like cash can be applied to any purchased ticket.

These are the only non-stop flights on AA, and the alternatives more than double the flight times. I'll show up early and hope for the best. Thanks again.

dates of the flights?

I'm guessing but you're probably on the Friday's Feb8 flight? because the rest of the week looks pretty open.

If so,

J7 D7 I0 Y6 B3 H2 G0 K0 M0 L0 W0 V0 N0 S0

that means that at this time AA is <b>still</b> willing to sell at least 7 business class seats and at least 6 economy class seats.

Yes, our flights are on the 8th at 8:00 AM and the 16th at 9:05 PM.
How do you look at a fare class inventory? Can you tell me if the flight on the 16th also has open seats?
Thanks.

Your return looks even better

J7 D5 I0 Y7 B7 H7 G7 K7 M7 L4 W0 V0 S0 N0

http://flyaow.com/classamex.htm

My wife &amp; I and another couple were leaving St. John for the US. Our friends refused to get to the airport any earlier than 1 hour before the flight and they thought on line check-in was a pointless. Well we had seats and they didn't. they got bumped and had to stay in St. Thomas another 6-7 hours. Moral of the story for me is use on-line check if available and get to the airport early.

Thanks AAFrequentFlyer and Pulley. I don't know which would be worse --a 9 hour trip for a three hour flight or staying overnight in the San Juan airport. I'll try to avoid both!

Just got back and had no trouble with both flights. However, our return flight from San Juan was delayed about 45 minutes. When we finally got on board, they announced that they wanted six volunteers for $600 voucher/night at hotel and same late night flight on Sunday. One taker. they upped to $800 voucher, and got 2 more takers. Upped to $800 voucher, hotel, and business class on same flight the next day. Then comes the announcement that they cannot leave the gate until they get three more volunteers. Happily, three more &quot;volunteers&quot; volunteered. I just wondered if it was realy true that they could not take off until more people got off the plane.

I doubt they wanted to give away all that money for nothing, so there must have been a reason.