Once upon a time, the normal bribe to get passengers to accept “voluntary” bumping was an unrestricted, transperable voucher for a round-trip ticket for a future flight on that airline. I remember collecting two such vouchers from Delta at Atlanta as back-to-back flights to Boston were oversold and I was at the top of the bumpee list.
Today, the airlines are not so generous.
When I wrote Travel Rights back in the early 90s, overbooking and lost luggage were the only two federal rules that affected passengers (today only the 3-hour tarmac delay rule has been added). Those rules weren’t all that different from today’s rules except for the amount of penalty that the airlines had to pay.
Each airline set up their own system for dealing with overbookings. Some handed out flight vouchers and then started to add cash if they needed the incentive. No one ever knew exact how anyone was selected to be bumped. Honestly, I think the victims were selected based on the place in line passing the gate agent.
Perhaps there was a more formal process. Those with expensive tickets went aboard. Those with the cheap seats were asked about voluntary bumping. In some cases families were kept together and single travelers were added to the potential bumpee list. Maybe the first to check in got to board while the last to check in were listed as possible bumpees.
It was all very mysterious, but the rewards were generous and seats on later flights were normally available.
Then the airlines shifted gears by awarding restricted round-trip ticket vouchers that were only good on select flights, with Saturday-night stayovers with limited seating capacity. In order they became about as hard to use as frequent-flier miles.
Next American Airlines (AA) led the charge into eliminating any round-trip vouchers and decided to issue AA airline scrip. Airline dollars that could be used on any future flight. It didn’t take a mathematics degree to figure that in possible future dollars the round-trip vouchers (even restricted ones) were worth a lot more, but the airline scrip was easier to use.
Today, almost all airlines have shifted to providing airline scrip as compensation for overbooking. A few still issue round trip ticket vouchers, but not many. This move by Delta to a silent auction system will probably be the incentive for all airlines to move to a scrip system.
It’s too bad. Getting bumped and receiving a round-trip voucher for future travel always seemed to be one of the few compensations for airline service misery. Now, all that remains is the gate area misery and fistful of airline monopoly money.
Delta’s silent auction system of bidding for bumping may be a solution, but may be open to corruption as airlines are tempted to sell more high-price tickets when they see their list of “voluntary” bumpees growing. We’ll keep an eye on this and ask DOT to do the same.
With airlines maintaining their limited capacity and Americans beginning to travel again, bumping will only become a bigger problem affecting a larger percentage of passengers.
What have been some of your recent experiences about overbooking compensation?
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
