Ask Gadling: How do I get bumped from a flight?

Today’s question comes from Mary in San Jose, CA:

Hi, I’m flying from San Jose to Appleton, WI. I’d like to know what to do if I get bumped? Will they let me call the person waiting for me to let them know I won’t be on time?

Gadling: What Mary’s referring to is the legendary “bump,” the notion that if a flight is oversold that the airline will offer passengers compensation to skip it and take the next best route. Rarely, they may even involuntarily bump passengers and offer a higher rate of compensation, but this event is pretty uncommon — lots of people usually volunteer for the initial bump call because they want vouchers for future travel.

Should you find yourself on an overbooked flight, Mary, gate agents will first likely make an announcement in the gate area asking if anyone is willing to change flights for a travel voucher. For a domestic flight, this is usually around $300, but this can be slightly more or less.

If you hear this announcement, you want to be the first person up to that counter to volunteer — there will be plenty of other willing people in the same boat as you.

View more Ask Gadling: Travel Advice from an Expert or send your question to ask [at] gadling [dot] com.

Before you run up to the gate all helter-skelter though, make sure you’re well prepared for the consequences. If there are no alternative routes home that day, you may be forced to spend the night in your current city or worse, even in the airport. You also may be forced to endure long layovers either at your current location or somewhere en route on the way home. Is that worth the flight voucher? Only you can tell.

Not sure if your flight is overbooked? You can always go to seatcounter.com to check how full your flights are. It can be difficult to read, but if you look up your flight and see lots of red zeroes next to it then you can bet that it’s overbooked.

Alternatively, you can always call the airline to ask how full the flight is — they’re not legally obligated to tell you if the flight is overbooked, but they’ll give you a good indication. And if you find the right agent, he or she will tell you how overbooked it is.

As a rule of thumb, Mary, assume that your flight isn’t overbooked and that it’s going to operate as normal. If you do get bumped, you should have plenty of time to reorient your return trip, make a few calls and get yourself in order for your next flight(s).

If you want more details on the whole process and how to engineer it to your advantage, check out Gadling’s Guide to Getting Bumped that we published a couple of years back.

[photo credit via the strangely familiar davitydave on flickr]

Southwest and FedEx planes bump wings

A Southwest Airlines jet bound for Albuquerque clipped wings with a Fed Ex cargo jet Sunday at the Salt Lake City Airport. A spokesperson for Southwest said the jet was about to pull back from the gate when it was bumped by the cargo plane. The pilots had not yet started the engine when they felt the “jolt” of the impact, which sliced off a 6-foot section of the plane’s wingtip.

No one was injured, though there was some initial confusion as to what caused what one passenger said felt like “a mini-earthquake”. The passengers were able to move to another plane for take off; the affected jet was repaired and put back in service.

While on the ground collisions between planes are rare, they do happen. A different Southwest plane clipped another passenger jet with its wing back in March.
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Help! I’ve been bumped!

No, bumping is not the latest craze to hit European dance floors, it’s what airlines do when they have more passengers than seats.

Chances are that you’ve been waiting in the departure gate area and have heard the gate agents ask for volunteers for a later flight. Overbooking has become a very profitable thing for airlines, and they have developed pretty smart mathematical systems to determine which flights have the greatest chances of passengers not showing up. Of course, even the best system is wrong every now and then, and your 88 passenger plane may have 110 people waiting at the gate for a seat.

Smart people prepare for bumps, and make a decent buck by taking the generous voucher in exchange for a later arrival. I’ve played the bumping game several times, and once made over $700 in travel vouchers just by accepting a 4 hour delay in my trip home. Grant Martin wrote about the art of fishing for bumps last year, and it’s a great way to learn how to make some extra money off the airline.

Of course, not every “bump” is voluntarily, and especially during busy times of the year, the airline will have a hard time finding volunteers for their offer. In some cases, they’ll keep raising the offer in the hope that someone snags it, but in the worst case, they’ll start calling out names of passengers who will be denied boarding.
This involuntarily denied boarding or IDB is costly for the airline, but only if you know your rights. The compensation rules for IDB changed this year, and passengers now get a better deal than we originally did with the 30 year old rules these changes replaced.

If the airline denies you boarding, you are entitled to $400, but only if the delay gets you to the first stopover of your trip more than 4 hours past your original arrival time. There is of course some fine print; the $400 is the maximum amount, and the true compensation is 200% of your airfare, with a maximum of $400. The whole thing is quite complicated, but is all described by the Department of Transportation in this document (PDF file).

Some other compensation could come from additional vouchers for food and beverages at the airport, hotel accommodation (on overnight IDB’s) and even free domestic US round trip ticket vouchers. If the airline is really desperate, you could even consider asking for an upgrade on your replacement flight.

When you are offered a voucher, be sure to ask the gate agent about the rules attached to it – some vouchers have so many restrictions that you’ll only ever be able to redeem it on a Monday morning between 8 and 8:30 and only on odd numbered days when the temperature is above 85. A free round trip ticket voucher may sound nice, but if it is impossible to redeem, it’ll be a useless piece of paper,

Remember – the law is on your side when you are denied boarding (assuming you got to the airport on time) so make sure you demand what you are entitled to!

Bump season is upon us

Spring break is upon us, ladies and gentlemen, which means that bump season is getting kicked into high gear. With the sudden spike in demand, airlines are going to be overbooking flights left and right, which means that casual travelers like you and I can take advantage of the system and start collecting vouchers for taking later flights.

Usually, the spring break bump season lasts through the entire month of March and into early April. Things die down or 6 – 8 weeks or so after that, then summertime travel hits and bumps increase in volume again. Bumptracker has some legacy data on this.

So if you’re flying in the next few weeks, take a look at seatcounter to see if your flight is oversold or near full. Plugging in your date and airline, you can tell if this is the case if there are all zeroes or mostly low numbers next to your flight. You can also ask at the gate or call the airline before departure; they’re obligated to tell you if the flight is oversold.

In case you’re worried about the ramifications of being bumped off a regularly scheduled flight, fear not — here at Gadling we’ve created a thorough guide to bumping, what it means, how to do it and how to work it to your advantage.

Check it out here.

Get out there and get kicked off some flights!