Overbooked Flights
 

I've never done this on an international, but on domestic flights I have, just wondering what is the general rule.

If I don't have to be somewhere at a specific time, with domestic airlines, I have volunteered to "give up my seat" on an overbooked flight. The compensation is normally a seat on the next flight and a free round-trip ticket domestically.

What about with international? If it is overbooked and you give up the seat, do they offer a free roundtrip anywhere the airline flies to, domestic or international?

With our December trip we can fairly easily adjust our days and locations and our return, so if the compensation is good enough, I'd agree to a little inconvenience. I have noticed that on the outbound trip there are only 20 seats remaining and on the inbound there are only 6 open. Looks like a "packed house" will probably happen over the next 5 weeks.

Anyone have any experience with this internationally?

Thanks,
Dave

Hi D,

On our last visit to Italy we were offered $400 pp, hotel accomodations in Rome and seats on the same flight the next day.

((I))

Yes, I have and I would advise you that the "compensation" offered can vary from instance to instance. The gate agents apparently have considerable leeway in what can be offered.

For example, this past April while I was waiting to board a flight to Europe it was announced that the flight was oversold and volunteers were solicited. The "compensation" level continued to increase, from a simple re-booking with a free domestic ticket to a re-booking, free domestic ticket, and MONEY.

If you are REALLY interested in doing this what I suggest you do is immediately upon arrival at the departure gate, TELL the agent you are willing to volunteer. It doesn't mean you have to if the time comes but you'll be given the first chance to do so.

Above are correct--it varies.

Returning from Amsterdam to Washington DC this past July, we were offered $450 each, hotel in Amsterdam with transportation to and from the airport, and an upgrade to business class the next day.

I wanted to take it, but Mrs. Fly was tired and just wanted to get home, so we declined.

Could be anything: from just a room/meals/phone call/seat on next avaiable flight, to the sky's the limit.

One time at DFW I was connecting to London and the flight was overbooked. Problem was there were two large-ish groups of teenagers (a band and a study group) that couldn't be separated from there adult chaperones -- so the agents were desperate.

started out a $400 + + +, kept upping the ante, and were still asking for volunteers after we boarded. Finally they got to <b>$1500, room, meals, next morning's flight AND a domestic ticket.</b>

That was the best I've ever seen. I would have jumped at it - but my friends were both nervous flyers, and had not been to London before -- so Rats - I had to let that windfall go.

I have friends who purposely book flights that tend to over book to scarf up on tix/money.

Hey, for $1,500, tickets, hotels I'd be racing to get off the plane. Whack the fellow travellers on the head and drag em off. :-)

I'm figuring that most people who travel internationally &quot;have&quot; to get to their destination at or near a certain time. Plus the number of flights are far fewer than domestic, so the airlines don't have as many options. We'd actually like to extend our trip, as we have a 5 day cushion to work with.

Hmmm, wonder how many other &quot;deals&quot; folks have seen.

Dave

&quot;Hmmm, wonder how many other 'deals' folks have seen.&quot;

Well, there's the famous $11,000 that BA gave Ken Hamer, a Canadian whose trip from Vancouver to Cairo turned into a nightmare. It wasn't so much a case of denied boarding, but rather a series of problems culminating in a downgrade from BA first to business class.

Ken has gotten a lot of mileage out of that event. You can read about it here in the Globe and Mail:

http://tinyurl.com/yhunbu

Anselm

Here is a recent article detailing the EU rules for compensation for delayed flights; overbooking might be along those lines:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/tr...mp;oref=slogin

&quot;<i>Hey, for $1,500, tickets, hotels I'd be racing to get off the plane. Whack the fellow travellers on the head and drag em off.</i>&quot;

Trust me -- I gave it a LOT of thought - actually leaving them on the plane and just getting off myself. :D

You might find this article from MSN Money of interest:

How to win the airline bumping game

http://preview.tinyurl.com/rywlx

There are other good articles on the same page.

janisj,
Gee, and I was willing to do it for $400 off our next flight.
Now if the deal was like the one you'd been offered...

Ah, looks like maybe a day and night in Milan. Flight is now down to 4 open seats and still 5 weeks before departure.

Hmmm, wonder about calling up and volunteering in advance. That way I could rearrange the last day or so.

God, now I'm getting greedy.

:-)

I have a good friend who goes to Europe fairly often. His sister works for one of the major carriers. He usually books last minute, after his sister has alerted him to which flights are routinely oversold. He almost always volunteers to be &quot;bumped&quot; and ends up with plenty of free tickets for the next trip.....

I couldn't ever do this as what they offer wouldn't be worth as much as a day of lost work time, monetarily, but if I didn't have that consideration, some of those offers sound pretty good (like the one Rufus had -- I'd go for that). Although I usually just want to get home at that point myself.

What I don't understand is why airlines would offer so much in compensation (like over $400) as that is all they are legally obligated to pay an involuntarily bumped passenger. Of course offering you an upgrade in seats doesn't cost them anything, so that sounds reasonable, but why would any airline offer more in cash than that limit? I can see maybe $450 to keep customers happy, but more than that doesn't seem to make financial sense unless they have to pay much more than I thought and my facts are out of date (I thought it was only $400 for international flights for being bumped involuntarily).

A lot of those voucher-only offers aren't that great as there are a lot of strings tied to using them, as I understand it. The only offers I've ever had, which weren't that tempting, were just a couple hundred dollars, and once Continental didn't offer anything but a voucher worth a couple hundred.

would probably cost me too much for the lost work time to ( a day of vacation time is worth a lot more than a few hundred dollars, and I also usually just want to get home by that time.

The EU has some pretty good compensation regulations, but I think that airlines in the US are often more abstractly generous (&quot;a round trip anywhere in the US&quot;) -- as to how it works out in monetary value, I can't say.

jsmith, thanks for providing the MSN article. I think I might suggest to my husband when he retires in a few years that we become &quot;professional bumpers&quot; ;;) Deborah

I get a few bumps each year. We're taking Thanksgiving weekend in Paris and after watching the fares escalate since we booked, seats on our return itinerary haven't even been available to purchase for a bit now. It's therefore looking very good in terms of overbooking. We scheduled an extra day off quite some time ago to be ready. :)

In February, 2005, I had tickets to go to Paris from Boston on Air France for myself and my husband. I had bought them during a great sale the previous May for $375 apiece.

Our daughter became ill at college three days before our trip and it looked like she might need surgery. At the doctor's suggestion, I called Air France and asked if we could postpone the trip to the next day to see if she was going to be all right. I was told I could cancel the tickets I had because of the medical issue but all they had available was business class the following day at $5,000.

Fortunately, my daughter improved and we went to the airport. February vacation week in Boston is an extremely difficult time to get tickets. Back when I used to buy tickets from travel agents, they would roll their eyes when I told them I wanted to go away during that week. So when we got to the Air France counter, they were overbooked and looking for volunteers for $500 cash or $950 in vouchers to go the next day in business class.

We took the cash. They would have put us up at an airport hotel if we wanted, but we went home and the next day we took the very business class seats on the flight that they told me would cost $5000 if I had paid in advance. When we got there, they were looking for volunteers again, but we weren't greedy and just took the flight.

We had a great week in Paris and went to the airport for our return. For some reason, when we got to the desk we learned that only one of our tickets had been confirmed and that the flight was full. &quot;What are you offering?&quot; we asked. 75 euros in cash for each of us plus our choice of either 300 additional euros each in cash or 600 euros each in vouchers. We took the vouchers this time. They put us up at a hotel near the airport with meals included, although we skipped the hotel dinner, took the 150 euros they had given us, went back into Paris and splurged on a seafood platter at La Coupole that was the envy of everyone sitting near us.

They were looking for volunteers the next day, but sadly my husband had to go back and teach the day after that.

I tried to repeat the technique this past February, but it didn't work. Oh well.

I was booked Business class on the evening flight from Boston to London. There was a flight cancellation somewhere with a lot of people needing to get to Europe. I boarded the plane &amp; they kept asking for volunteers.

I finally gave up my seat, got a voucher for $900.00 (if I remember correctly), free hotel, taxi vouchers &amp; 2 meal vouchers. Got the next morning's flight, also in Business &amp; actually arrived the evening of the day I was originally scheduled to get there &amp; I wasn't jet-lagged.

Last spring, Luftansa was begging for volunteers. About 15 of us received guaranteed seats on a flight 6 hours later and 800E. Seeing it was a flight home, not there - I jumped on it. Didn't interfere with work and seeing the trip was paid for by the company the $$ was just bonus for me!