Tag Archives for involuntary denied boarding.
The latest DOT Air Travel Consumer Report shows Delta avoided bumping passengers entirely, while American led the industry in cancellations, mishandled bags, denied boardings, and passenger complaints.
A passenger on Frontier Airlines flight 1449 from Atlanta to Denver Friday evening says they were bumped from the aircraft after they had already boarded in order to make room for staff. She says she was “threatened with arrest” if she didn’t give up her seat, and she missed the wedding she was headed to. The flight wound up taking off without her.
On busy travel days flying can be profitable. Your seat has value, and you can sell it. One Delta passenger found themselves on an overbooked flight, and took $2,000 as compensation to take a later flight. That later flight wound up overbooked, too, and they took $3,000 to volunteer for a bump from that one. That’s $5,000 in a day.
Friday’s United Airlines Newark to Dubrovnik flight was reportedly oversold in business class. United doesn’t normally sell more tickets in business class than they have seats, and it doesn’t appear that the aircraft was swapped to one with a smaller business class cabin.
Nobody would take the airline’s generous offers of compensation, even though “[t]hey offered 2500 and then 3000.”
Michael Trager, who runs frequent traveler and casino loyalty site TravelZork, had one of the most interesting “bump” stories I’ve heard in a long time. He was involuntarily denied boarding on an American Airlines flight last week, and airport staff refused to provide him any compensation saying that they “do not care about DOT Rules.”
Delta Air Lines overbooked a flight, so as is common they offered passengers gift cards to give up their seat and take a later flight. One passenger who had already boarded the flight in Atlanta accepted their offer of $700 but when he got off the aircraft the airline would not pay.
My take is that he maybe should run away from this relationship? I don’t claim to have very much data to work off of, but there do seem to be warning signs.
Wednesday’s American Airlines flight 2484 from Las Vegas to Philadelphia had about two dozen more passengers than they could fly. The airline started offering vouchers to people that would give up their seat, but they weren’t getting enough volunteers. So first class passengers reportedly took matters into their own hands, started a collection, and topped off American’s offer so that passengers would get off of the flight and they could leave.
According to Delta President Glen Hauenstein, cancellation rates vary far more than they did before the pandemic so Delta plans to increase overbooking and ‘see what happens’ – because without change fees on most fares, people are changing plans more at the last minute. This could result in more passengers denied boarding.
Denied boarding compensation is a cooperation game. As long as everyone sticks together, the total compensation amount will be higher. But as the compensation offer goes up the incentive for a given passenger to defect gets greater and greater.
TV writer Mike Drucker observed this in action, and watched passengers in New York stick together, as the airline’s offer went up and up.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
