Airline bumping

I keep hoping one day I will get bumped and reap the rewards.

How to win the airline bumping game

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.

By Melinda FulmerWhen Harvey Oreck hears “Ladies and gentlemen . . .” in an airline terminal, he rushes to the gate before the agent can finish the sentence.

Oreck and other frequent fliers know these announcements signal an overbooked flight, with free trips and/or cash vouchers for the first volunteers to change their travel plans. Airline over-sales swelled 12% in the first nine months of the year, giving flexible fliers a greater chance to land some of these freebies and offset the rising cost of air travel.

Oreck, a semiretired lawyer and former barrister from Vancouver, British Columbia, estimates he and his family have scored airline vouchers for about 30 flights from the bumps that he has taken over the past five years, paying for trips to Thailand, Mexico and other locales.

On a trip home from Las Vegas, he accepted a bump to a later flight and took a free flight voucher. Minutes later, someone backed out of his original flight, allowing Oreck to go home as planned and keep his already-issued voucher. Of course, he said, he wouldn’t have been allowed to switch back if he hadn’t asked.

“You have to be alert and proactive,” Oreck said.

Scoring freebies from the airlines is no sure thing. But experts say there are a few things you can do to increase your odds. First, look at which carriers are bumping the most people.

Regional carriers such as Comair and Skywest overbooked the most in the first quarter. Among the big guys, Delta Air Lines reported the most overbooking per passenger in the quarter, followed by Northwest and US Airways.

Best bets for voluntary bumps, January-March 2007:

Rank	Airline	Voluntary bumps	Involuntary bumps	Enplaned passengers	Voluntary bumps (per 10,000 passengers)
1	Comair	1,845	153	461,448	39.98
2	Skywest Airlines	5,430	496	1,814,434	29.93
3	Atlantic Southeast Airlines	2,808	527	970,316	28.94
4	Mesa Airlines	3,358	351	1,813,068	18.52
5	Delta Air Lines	27,374	5,516	15,904,335	17.21
6	Northwest Airlines	19,515	1,424	11,386,586	17.14
7	US Airways	19,348	2,182	12,994,097	14.89
8	AirTran Airways	6,484	107	5,080,108	12.76
9	United Airlines	17,517	604	15,013,562	11.67
10	American Airlines	22,133	2,213	20,850,796	10.61
11	Alaska Airlines	3,257	347	3,401,586	9.57
12	Continental Airlines	8,576	1,925	9,977,651	8.6
13	Southwest Airlines	19,222	2,874	22,903,022	8.39
14	American Eagle Airlines	319	67	561,144	5.68
15	Frontier Airlines	1,095	354	2,214,518	4.94
16	Hawaiian Airlines	408	85	1,674,816	2.44
17	Aloha Airlines	141	16	949,892	1.48
18	JetBlue Airways	0	19	5,090,815	0

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation

Each airline has different standards for what they will pay out. Some, such as Northwest, will give customers a $200 travel certificate if they are inconvenienced by a couple of hours or $400 for a longer layover. Others, like Delta Air Lines, usually offer a free round-trip ticket regardless of the situation. 

Of course, airline officials say, the pot gets sweeter if the gate agents have trouble finding volunteers.

Attorney Christopher Lotz, for example, scored a voucher worth about $1,000, enough for another European trip, by putting off his return from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to San Antonio, Texas, by one night. Northwest Airlines put him up in a hotel and gave him vouchers for food and round-trip airline transportation.

When to look for bumps

If you want to get bumped, analysts say, you should try to travel in peak times for your destination. Flights to and from business destinations such as Dallas or Atlanta fill up on Monday mornings and Friday evenings. Likewise, flights to touristy Orlando, Fla., often overbook on a peak Friday or Saturday. And the last flight of the day from most locations is usually full, said Josef Loew, the senior vice president of scheduled service for ATA Airlines. The peak summer season is full of overbooked flights, as are flights around holidays. 

Lotz, for example, knows that when he books his trips to Hawaii over the Christmas holiday or arranges flights back from Las Vegas on a Sunday night, he will most likely be offered a bump.

“I wouldn’t buy a ticket just to play the (overbooking) lottery,” he said. “But it’s almost always oversold.”

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.

Those looking to cash in on airline overbooking should volunteer their names early. The airline can know as much as two hours ahead of departure time whether it will need volunteers to switch to another flight, said Loew, of ATA Airlines. Typically, most airlines offer compensation on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Oreck and Lotz also make it a practice never to check luggage. They said it makes them better candidates for a bump because gate agents don’t have to deal with hauling their luggage off of a plane.

It pays to be polite, they said, when a gate agent is frazzled, and it doesn’t hurt if you’re a member of some airline’s elite frequent-flier club. But even if you’re not, analysts say, try to negotiate a bit. Ask for an upgrade and a meal voucher to make the experience even more worthwhile. You won’t get these things unless you ask, Lotz said.

A free night on the town

When bumped from a Hawaii flight out of San Jose, Calif., Lotz asked for a next-day flight from San Francisco instead. He and his wife received a free ticket, a hotel night in a city they wanted to explore and $80 in meal vouchers. And they left for Honolulu the next day flying first class rather than coach. His only expense? He paid for a rental car to San Francisco. 

“You don’t want to jump at the first offer,” Lotz said. “You want to receive the best deal.”

If Lotz finds out someone else bumped from his flight had received $400 in vouchers and he got only $200, he will ask the agent to receive equal compensation. He also prefers to receive cash certificates instead of free round-trip tickets, so he can record the frequent-flier miles.

If you’re going to take a bump, be careful about how you handle the negotiation:

Make sure you’ve got a confirmed seat on another flight before you give up your reservation. You don’t want to wait days to fly out on standby.

Be clear on the restrictions, if you choose to receive a free travel voucher. Many are subject to blackout dates, and some trips must be booked at an airport instead of online or by phone.

Get your compensation in writing. Yoseph Goldstein of Flushing, N.Y., said he had agreed to a bump when his Delta flight from New York to Jacksonville, Fla., was overweight. He wasn’t given a travel voucher and was told instead that it would be taken care of at his destination. When he arrived in Jacksonville, his luggage had been loitering for more than an hour. And the agents there knew nothing about his change of plans. Goldstein ultimately had to contact Delta’s corporate headquarters and wait a few weeks for compensation.

Still, he said, he would choose to get bumped again, as long as he got compensation on the spot. And so would a growing number of people who are becoming familiar with the perks of being bumped. That’s why, Oreck said, it’s important not to push your luck when negotiating at the gate. Take what’s offered if you have the time, he said.

“My time is not so valuable when it’s not being used for a specific purpose,” Oreck said. Besides, he said, “Flying is a misadventure anyway.”

System works for airlines, too

There’s increased pressure for airlines to keep their seats full, and airline officials say they need to overbook to remain profitable. Flights are expected to be at 85% of capacity this summer, a 10-year high. 

Giving a $200 or $400 travel voucher is often less expensive for the airline than turning down a sale to a business traveler paying a much higher price — or taking off with empty seats because of no-shows and changed reservations, which typically account for 5% to 20% of a flight.

“This is entirely an issue of economics,” said ATA Airlines’ Loew.

If passengers make last-minute changes to their reservations, or just don’t show up and rebook later, they take away the opportunity to resell their original seats while filling spots on subsequent flights. In effect, the airlines can find themselves giving up two seats for the price of one ticket.

“Airline seats are perishable,” says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, a trade group for the industry. “When that aircraft leaves, the airline has lost the ability to sell that seat.”

Updated June 1, 2007