Aerospace engineer and Fear Factor alum Danielle Stephens Vlasica was flying American Airlines flight 758 from Philadelphia to Athens and the flight was overbooked. The airline kept upping the voluntary compensation offer to get three people to give up their seats. Here they’re at $3,600 but “they ended up going to $4500 per person” to take a flight the next day.
This is highly unusual for American and something you see far more often on Delta. Delta generally will not involuntarily bump anyone. They’ll keep upping their offer until someone takes it. American is much more likely to stop bidding and pay out the legally minimum required compensation, leaving passengers behind involuntarily.
In fact, American Airlines usually stops the bidding with their third offer, requiring the gate to get outside approval to go higher, with an eye towards cost control.
Airlines are much better at managing their oversales, so bump compensation isn’t as frequent as it used to be. Nonetheless, here’s a flight where Delta handed out over $43,000 in compensation. Here’s one where they paid out $63,000. One Delta passenger last year paid off their car by taking a bump off of a Delta flight.
Good for them. However, since Dr. Dao, airlines have increased their maximum payouts to $10,000, so… Overbooking is one thing; delays and cancellations under the control of the airlines are another (think, staffing issue, failing to properly maintain the aircraft, etc.) If the delay was significant enough, say, 4+ hours for a TATL flight… that could mean $250-700 per passenger owed under EU261. We really should have something like this in the US. Watch as miraculously less flights are delayed when the incentives align better. Hmm.