I personally have never been bumped from a flight. My littlest sister was once though and she got a travel voucher and flew first class when it was all said and done. I on the other hand have had to disembark due to bad weather and all I got was a nights stay at the ‘Red Roof Inn’ of all places. Oh, and $15 for food.
Some frequent travelers do see overbooking as a game, making specific travel plans because they think a flight will be oversold and that they can reap the rewards. Some turn to Web sites such as Bumptracker, which analyze the number of seats oversold on certain flights at certain times. Others analyze flight loads online and look at the number of competing flights from other airlines to make their selections. Bump strategy is discussed in great detail in a number of discussion groups on the Web, including the forums on sites such as FlyerTalk.
Sometimes patient travelers can score multiple tickets from a trip with a layover. Industry watcher Terry Trippler of Vacation Passport remembers when his daughter’s friend was bumped on her honeymoon from the four Northwest Airlines legs she took to Honolulu and back to her home in Minneapolis, Minn.
“They came home with four round-trip tickets to Honolulu and went back for their first anniversary,” Trippler said.
Savvy fliers take advantage of carriers’ overbookings to score free trips, hotel rooms and meals, and to ease the bite of rising airfares. Here’s how they do it as told in an article by Melinda Fulmer
Don’t miss a minute… Subscribe to Debo Hobo RSS Feed
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related posts:
- Cheap Airfare Boots-n-All
- Would You Pay To Pee?
- Coffee, Tea & Cover Your Eyes Please
- Profit Over Safety-The Outsourcing Of America Continues
- When Traveling Abroad, Use Distance Conversion to Calculate How Far You Need to Go
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
That’s pretty cool. I didn’t know about flight bumps! Can you resell the tickets afterward?
Reply
Lets see, I took a bump once and got a free round trip which I got to use as a first class ticket 6 month later due to overselling of economy again. That was TWA and look where they are now. I also have had weather ground me but not long enough to get a hotel room, but long enough to get off the plan and hit the bar. Have had not take the bump because missing a cruise ship would not be worth what they were offering.
Reply
[...] talks about playing the bump game and win! Who’s been a lucky traveler [...]
About ten years ago, I went for a 2-month trip to Europe. Our flight was overbooked and the agents were stressing over how to accomodate everyone. My travelling companions and I looked at each other and volunteered to be bumped. After all, we had two months of vacation, so why not? Vacation is about the journey, right? We got diverted to Rome instead of a direct flight to Paris, which cost us about four hours extra travel time. The payoff: a check for the original cost of our plane tickets – round-trip plane tickets. Sweet!
Reply
[...] Play The Bump Game and Win is a great post about getting perks from airlines for being bumped from your flight. [...]