American has a new bidding system for customers to volunteer for denied boarding compensation. The goal is to hold down costs by getting customers to state up front how much they’ll accept for a bump, and the airline started holding people to their bid amounts rather than paying everyone the highest amount necessary to get enough volunteers.
One problem with this system has been customers placing their bids without knowing how long it will be until the next flight they’re able to get on, so it’s not really possible for a customer to know in advance what amount they’d accept for inconvenience. American is testing a new approach to showing customers flights when they’re volunteering, but there’s a pretty big catch.