On Monday morning Delta Air Lines was handing out $3,000 to passengers to take a later flight from Chicago to Seattle. It was the 7:50 a.m. departure the morning after Easter. And one passenger shares what happened after they had already boarded.
I boarded with Zone 2, grabbed my seat in Row 10, and settled in. Then a gate agent walks up to the front of first class—no mic, no big announcement—and casually drops what sounded like a travel myth:
“We’re looking for two volunteers to deplane due to fuel rebalancing issues. Compensation is $3,000.”
I barely even processed it before my hand was in the air. No hesitation. I wasn’t letting anyone else beat me to it. Another passenger raised theirs right after.
They were given a $2,000 credit and a separate $1,000 credit. The amounts were so high that Delta had to run it as two separate transactions. You are given a claim voucher and then go to the airline’s Choice Benefits portal to covert them to gift cards.
The airline had already been handing out $1,700 credits – to 22 passengers! – before discovering they needed two more passengers who each received $3,000 according to this customer. That’s $43,400 in compensation on a single flight!
What’s more, the rich payouts were for minimum inconvenience as “[s]ome passengers got rebooked by the gate agent on Delta and United flights just 2-3 hours later!”
This customer was headed to work, but actually told their CEO they blew it off for $3,000, “Figured you’d respect the ROI.” And they replied, “That’s better than our bonus structure.”
Delta offered $3,000 to get off a flight after boarding. I didn’t even think—I just threw my hand up!
byu/bag_o indelta
What’s amazing is that Delta was so generous in this case, for two reasons.
- If they were required to compensate passengers for the overbooking, the most they’d have had to pay a passenger is 400% of their one-way fare, not to exceed $2,150.
- However, Delta wouldn’t have been required to pay passengers at all for this flight. The overbooking was reportedly the result of an aircraft swap. It was a smaller plane, and Delta had fewer seats. And when that happens, airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers at all.
Delta doesn’t want ‘involuntary denied boardings’ and is willing to keep bidding up their offers until passengers willingly give up their seats which is really commendable.
In the first six months of last year, Delta involuntarily denied boarding to just a single passenger In contrast, American Airlines involuntarily bumped 6,832. American isn’t willing to make generous offers to customers to give up their seats, does the minimum required by law, and involuntarily bumps more passengers than all other U.S. airlines combined.
As a passenger, it’s important to consider game theory in situations like this. Everyone who gives up their seat is going to get the highest amount offered. You just need to get in on this before other passengers do. One Delta passenger received $5,000 for giving up his seat twice in the same day.
With supervisor approval, the airline will go up to $9,950 in compensation for passenger. If you form a cartel and everyone holds out, Delta keeps bidding up the offer. Can you get everyone to hold out, so that all volunteering passengers get a bigger payday? If you honor the agreement to hold out, and others defect, they get paid and you do not. That’s the essence of OPEC.
It’s important to consider also how your loved ones or your employer will react to your skipping a flight to see them. One woman was furious with her boyfriend for taking $2,000 from Delta and delaying seeing her. He should have taken a Coasian approach and split the money with her, spending some of the money on a present. (“I did it for your, sweetheart…”)
Nice payouts! Congrats to the recipients, winners of more opportunities for premium travel experiences.
What a complete loser as is any adult professional who does this for $3,000. There are attorneys whose hourly billing rate is higher than that. Remember a 1 second email can be billed as 0.1 hours, meaning it is conceivable for an attorney to make over $3,000 in ten seconds.
I know high financiers whose bonuses are $30,000,000 a year. I know an asset manager who was making that much 30 years ago. Yep, he’s a billionaire today. Have you heard of him? No. He’s just a regular guy.
My point being $3,000 is less than pocket change- unless you’re a loser.
That guy is the man. No notes.
And good on Delta for actually paying out, instead of trying to get away with this, lie to folks, come up with excuses, etc. We need more honorable companies like this.
@Unintimidated — Oh, no… not this again… $3K is real money for most people. Objectively, a good deal here. You’re comparing apples to oranges with these references to ‘big law’ types and/or tech/finance bros. C’mon. Be better than that.
@Unintimidated
You gotta be a troll living in mom’s basement. I have achieved what is defined as a 1%er. And my butt would have been out that aircraft door so fast my old man Skecher shoes would have been on fire.
@H2oman — And there’s nothing wrong with trolls living in mom’s basement, either. Same goes for Sketchers; them shoes are comfy (and relatively affordable!) So, as always, you do you. Bah!
Delta gets it right. That’s how it should be, airlines offer enough they don’t have to IDB.
and flightaware shows the flight left on-time and arrived 11 minutes early.
consistently lowest consumer complaint ratio of the big 3, best operational metrics
They truly should bring back the tagline “the airline run by professionals”
@Tim Dunn — Well said, sir. Delta ‘Love(s) to Fly, and It Shows.’ Personally, I ‘Love the Way (they) Fly,’ too; it often feels like you’re ‘On Top of the World’ with Delta. The fact is that ‘Delta Gets You There’ because they are usually ‘Ready When You Are.’ So, let’s ‘Keep Climbing.’ *wink*
@ Gary — I would have done the same under my previous employer (and probably did at some point), but I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to announce my achievement to the whole world. I wonder how $3,000 compares to his unemployment compensation?
DL seems very honed in, if not obsessed with it’s IDB number/rate compared to other airlines. Given it’s something most people don’t know about, or even care about, since very, very, very few would ever have it happen I’m not sure how much PR they get out of it.
Your info on DBC is incorrect. You cannot go above the DBC maximum with supervisor approval anymore. The max is $2500 for Domestic and $6000 for International
George,
it’s because IDBs often go very wrong esp. when it involves passengers already on board.
Remember Dr. Dao?
Suppose that the damage to UA”s reputation cost more than $43,000?
@intimidated
The people you speak of are not you. You attaching your self worth to the achievements of others, probably those you make coffee for, is what losers do.
Losers also brag online under the safety of anonymity. Winners don’t spend their precious time trolling on travel blogs. So if you were trying to convince online strangers that you’re a winner, you did the exact opposite.
Great post Gary, but inconsistent. Did everyone get $3k? I’m betting only the last two did, and they weren’t part of the group that got $1,750. Do they have recourse to get the full $3,000.
What I found most interesting is that it came in the form of a gift card- did it have an expiration date? What about the United or American vouchers – one year expiration?
@Tim Dunn. I’m at an airport right now. I would guarantee you that if I walked up to every passenger asked who is “Dr. Dao” 90% of people would be like “who?”
IDB are allowed albeit airlines try to avoid them. There should be a process in determining who gets bumped. What should have happened is that the entire plane deplaned, Dr. Dao cuffed, taken off the plane and taken into custody. If he fights the police then he should have got charged with battery on a LEO.
Gary or anyone else that can answer. Why isn’t Delta required to pay passengers compensation for being bumped off a flight for swapping out aircraft? In this case, Delta used the BC1 in replace of the usual BC3 aircraft that operates the flight, and which has 30 more seats. If Delta chooses to swap aircraft for whatever reason, that should not be at the expense of a passenger who paid for said flight and is now being inconveniently put on another later flight.
The difference that airline personnel can make. Here money is handed out to get people to happily comply and have many others think well of the airline. This is opposed to the flight attendant on another airline who refused to do her job to assist a disabled person stowing several items. I’m sure that that action makes some think less of that other airline and may have financial considerations due to people booking elsewhere.
@H2oman — Sketchers, very nice!
@Tim Dunn — Whoa nice! That’s time management at its finest.
$3K is $3K, I say yes please. I’m pretty lucky in that I’m in general I can take another paid day off if I want to for the thrill of a free flight(s) on a future trip.
Anyway, a nice reminder for me to be grateful and not to take for granted my current ability financially and logistically to travel as much as I do, despite the non-lawyer loser that I am 🙂
@Humdrum – I think from a public policy perspective you don’t want to penalize airlines making responsible decisions for safety and also accommodating passengers where they can. It would be odd if they cancelled a flight and inconvenienced everyone and owed every passenger nothing (other than a refund or rebooking) while helping out passengers by substituting an aircraft forces them to pay out compensation?
https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/bumping-oversales
“Bumped passengers are NOT eligible for compensation in the following situations:
Aircraft Change – A smaller plane is substituted for the larger one the airline originally planned on using due to operational or safety reasons.”
@Mantis you have no idea who I am. I sold my company for multiple hundreds of millions. I am a centimillionaire. You post nonsense on a travel blog. There’s no bigger loser than you, CHRIS and C_M in the comments of this blog.
@Gary
Interesting to know. Thanks for the explanation
A centimeter is 1/100th of a meter. A hectometer is 100 meters.
What happened to all the 10k offers they used to give? Also shouldnt all the people receive the same compensation not just the last two?
@Unitimidated for real get a grip. You have had great success. That doesn’t mean everyone who is having a normal life is a loser. And, I’ll note, although “The Millionaire Next Door” is a bit dated (it came out in like the late 1990s), there are millionaires and multimillionaires that’d take that $3,000 — they made their money by having a successful business, but also living frugally (and they gave counterexamples of people making like half a mil a year or more but moving into a bigger house, expensive cars, expensive suits and clothes, country club membership, etc. so they were flat broke and in debt.)
@Gene, I don’t know maybe he knows his employer is cool. I’ve had a few I most certainly wouldn’t have done that with (Well, I’d take the $3,000 but I wouldn’t brag about it, just say my flight got delayed or whatever). But others would have had a laugh over it and said “fair enough”.
A premium VDB experience. Delta really does shine in these situations. One day, my number will be called ha!
American seems to be getting the message, I took three bumps on a trip last week, total of $3k for a few extra hours in the airport. Not sure how you run a business like that, they lost a total of $10k after handing them out.
Un – not one who sold their company for $100s of million is reading a travel blog – nevermind commenting.
Other point is yeah, $3k in travel credits isn’t something to get excited about like the guy in the article.
Gary Leff has repeatedly confirmed that multiple centimillionaires read this blog.
@Unitimidated — Bah. An actual centimillionaire, eh? I’m with @David427, I doubt it. But, if true, do us all a favor and just fly ‘private’ instead of dealing with us peasants. Or whatever, you do you.
@Tim Dunn @George N Romey — Fellas, I sure do remember Dr. Dao. He’s that Asian doctor that got knocked-out on UA3411. #NeverForget. That guy’s a personal hero. He took one for the team. And United tried to defame him afterwards. Vile. Hope he’s living large on his cash settlement.
@Mantis — Hey, you do you, but let’s be real: Anonymity and privacy is an asset. Fame is often a liability. I may not agree with you or @Unintimidated often, and I don’t need to know where you live to enjoy online banter, debate topics, share ideas, and/or riff with you or anyone else here.
@L737 — Don’t sweat it. We can all be losers (lawyers included), and that’s fine, too. Bah!
@ 1990 — More importantly, who cares? Why would one need $100 million other to brag about it? It is a stupid endeavor — make $100 million, then die just like everyone else. What’s the point exactly???