They do the same sort of thing soliciting volunteers to be bumped from a flight for less in vouchers than they'd be entitled to had they been involuntarily removed.
I don't see a problem with that (unless the voucher has ridiculous terms) because it allows someone who doesn't mind being bumped to voluntarily accept it rather than going straight to the "you've been chosen, here's the legally mandated payment."
I've made out quite well on United. I had 2 flights back from London to NY where I accepted a 3 hour delay (with lounge access) and made a total over of $2500 in vouchers. The terms were generous too—a year to use them (extended by a year because it was around the pandemic), and you could partially use them, it just added to a "voucher balance" you could draw from.
Hmm? The flights originally cost around $700 since it was winter season. So I got paid around $1200 per flight to sit in a lounge with free unlimited food and drinks for 3 hours. Of course would prefer more, but $400/hr to relax in a lounge is a job I'd take! Besides, I could have said no…
And it ended up being around 3 or 4 years, but because of the pandemic. I honestly don't remember the original amount, 1 or 2 years. Either way I had no issue using them. I was even able to use them to pay for another traveler as long as I was also on the booking (bought my mother a ticket).
Side note: No need for this dismissive tone, my statements were obviously subjective—one person's generous can easily be another person's disappointing. So you're in violation of two HN guidelines:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
14 CFR 250.5 calls for an airline to compensate you for involuntarily denied boarding for overbooking (your circumstance) to the tune of 400% of the fare (though this is capped at $1,550) per person, so that's a helpful index to understand what benefit there might be holding out.
Airlines _will_ frequently offer voluntary benefits in excess of this amount to maintain good relationships, and gate agents for, say, Delta, can even offer as high as nearly $10k [1], which is kind of crazy: you'd think they'd just fall back on the involuntary limits.
I was not involuntarily denied boarding, I was voluntarily denied and in fact lucky to get the offer as multiple people wanted it once it hit that level, since it was an early afternoon flight for which a 3 hour delay again with lounge was quite pleasant.
But only to those who are involuntary bumped. So they look for volunteers who will take less than that first. So far when I have traveled the offer hasn't been enough that I have wanted to give up my spot. But the person above's offer sounds like one I would have considered.
He probably wouldn't have been paid anything, someone else would have been chosen at random to be bumped off. This way the burden shifts to whoever it's least inconvenient for.
My wife and I were flying from San Juan with a layover in Atlanta going to Nashville. We gladly volunteered to take a flight that next morning for $1000 a piece + food voucher + hotel.
Which seems fair enough to me. If someone is flexible and wants to accept the airline’s offer, it’s fine for the airline and them to reach a voluntary agreement.
Stuff like this makes my blood boil. It should be illegal for airlines to overbook flights - full stop. I don't care how much this reduces profits. I don't care how "razor thin" the margins are.
I want to see some damn collective organizing. Can you imagine if passengers had started revolting against the idiot agents who abused the person arrested there?
The more pain airlines feel from the ensuing bad PR as a result of the chaos, the better that flying gets for everyone. I want airlines to fear the power of the customer.
You're going to end up with some level of IDB'd (involuntarily denied boarding) passengers in any world where seats/safety equipment break, equipment changes, crew members get sick and/or time out and airline personnel need to be shuttled to crew another flight that would otherwise be entirely cancelled, or unexpected weather [higher than typical temperatures, unfavorable winds] or airport conditions [runway closures/temporary shortening] preclude a full gross weight takeoff.
As a passenger, I appreciate that my airfares are lower and some airfares have increased flexibility because the airlines have a deep understanding of the turn-up ratio and sell tickets in light of that fact. I appreciate the cases where [probably without my awareness] a flight or cabin crew/member [or maintenance tech and part] has been last-minute flown in to crew/fix a flight that I ended up taking rather than having it be cancelled.
Does it suck to be IDB'd? Sure. Does it happen often? Almost never (around 23 in a million or 1 in 44K embarkations). People in the US are about 5.5 times more likely to be killed in a car crash in a given year than be IDB'd on a given flight.
From that link, passengers voluntarily taking the airline offers vastly exceeds those involuntarily denied (by a factor of almost 14:1 overall and many of the majors having exactly zero IDBs in that year).
That means the airline most frequently reaches an acceptable agreement to someone. You might wish that they used some other process, but the process they are using usually gets to an agreement as it is.
I disagree. I'm fine with overbooking because it makes travel more efficient, both environmentally and financially. However, the airlines should offer whatever it takes to fix overbooked flights. Some of the passengers will be glad to be 4 hours late when they are compensated with, say, 5000$. This will naturally lead to a proper balance of overbooking.
I dunno, most of the time, the offered vouchers have been more than the cost of the flight by a good amount. I haven't had an offer in a while, but the last few times were often starting at around 2x the price I'd paid for the flight for a 2-3 hour delay. I've never seen it be less than $200.
