Delta Air Lines flight 5637 from New York JFK to Columbus was overbooked on Saturday, and a gate agent found himself begging passengers to take $1,300 and travel at 9 a.m. the next day.
The airline started off offering $800. That’s more than you’ll find American or United offering most of the time. The agent worked his way up to $1,300 volunteer – and he was selling it. He needed three volunteers and pitched,
That’s a lotta money ledies and gentlemen. You understand me, you need to look me in the eye. Just let this $1,300 go by? Come on.
$1,300, you could do a lotta stuff with that. You could splurge! Do I have my $1,300 volunteers?
And he celebrates with joy, “YEAH! I got two!” But he still needed one more.
The auctioneering to find 3 volunteers took a little time. The flight departed 10 minutes late – but still arrived in Columbus, Ohio nearly half an hour early.
A few passengers were each $1,300 richer. And unlike most airlines that fund bumps with airline scrip, Delta actually provides $1,300.
On Christmas Eve day Delta was offering as much as $8,000 per passenger (before reneging when they cancelled the flight). Shortly after the David Dao dragging incident on United Delta authorized gate agents to go up to $9,950.
Around that time United gave one passenger a $10,000 travel credit for taking a later flight but they eliminated that generosity at the start of the pandemic. American Airlines once handed out $5,000 per passenger on a flight where they weren’t legally required to do compensation at all, because the overbooking resulted from a change in aircraft. Yet they handed out around $250,000 in compensation for that one flight. American ceased their generous denied boarding compensation policies, too, leaving only Delta regularly handing out that much cash when they overbook.
Delta still takes the position that when they make a mistake and sell too many tickets, it’s their responsibility to own the cost and make it worthwhile for passengers to take a later flight – instead of ultimately just falling back on legal minimum cash compensation if there aren’t enough volunteers at lower amounts.
[…] an agent literally begging passengers to take $1,300 (not travel vouchers!) to give up their seat and take a later flight, because more people showed up […]