I know several frequent flyers, and several readers of this blog, who used to “play the bump game.” They’d buy airline tickets for flights they expected to be oversold, with the purpose of showing up and volunteering to take a different flight (or just cancel the trip!) and get a voucher for future travel.
When I was just out of college I used to fly back from Rochester to DC at least once a month, and in the winter the United Express Jetstream 32 turboprop operated by Atlantic Coast Airlines would go out weight restricted every time. They’d sell 17 or 18 of the seats on Sunday evening, but could only take 15 passengers. As a Mileage Plus elite I was at the top of the list when I’d volunteer, and fund my next trip by waiting until Monday morning to fly home and go straight into work.
This became even more lucrative post-David Dao as airlines upped compensation amounts to avoid involuntary denied boardings. However airlines also got better at avoiding being in that situation in the first place.
A similar tactic is to book flights that you expect to be delayed, and buy the travel insurance to get a payout for the delay. That’s how one scam worked in China where insurance policies generally just paid a flat amount if your flight was delayed. Although they’ve tightened up the terms recently to now,
- Require you to actually take the flight to qualify for a payout
- Exclude paying benefits when you clearly knew there would be a delay when you purchased the insurance
One woman reportedly pocketed $423,000 making bookings during bad weather events, choosing flights that had histories of delays. She’d buy the insurance and pocket the payouts. And she scaled this by not just booking her own travel, but booking in the names of family members as well.
The 45-year-old woman, surnamed Li, booked hundreds of flights from 2015 to 2019. She had no intention of actually taking these trips. Instead, her only goal was to purchase flight delay insurance to turn the flight into a money-making opportunity.
Before buying the insurance, Li would analyze local weather conditions and online reviews to judge which flights would be most likely to be delayed or canceled.
In this way, she booked over 900 flights in those five years, using her name as well as the names of her friends and family members and made a whopping 3 million yuan ($423,000) in the process.
Credit: Nanjing Police
On Wednesday she was arresed in Nanjing for fraud. Although it’s not clear to me that she violated the terms of any policy she purchased. And indeed this scam seems quite common for mainland China as well.
(HT: One Mile at a Time)
Americans: you seein’ this? POC detained, not resisting arrest, nobody firing guns or tasers, nobody shouting ACAB.
That’s what a civil society looks like.
@Jason
Hong Kong: you seeing this?
I would not exactly call a Chinese person in a country of 1.5 billion Chinese a person of color. Nor would I say there is an equivalence between a group that commits a low amount of violent crime (and has high average IQ) versus a group which commits the highest amount of violent crime everywhere they are in the world (and has low average IQ). Cops arrest people for speech in Europe so gentle cops still abuse regularly.
Check her social media presence: does she run a blog?
Honestly, we’d be a bunch of hypocrites to jump on her. She took full advantage of a legal loophole. Which is why we all come to the blogs, after all.
While China obviously doesn’t require for someone to have actually committed any sort of crime in order to be punished, I think that the insurance company should hire her a la Catch Me If You Can.
It really sounds like her actions were legal — clever, but legal. Why didn’t the insurance company take a look at flight history, time of the year, etc., and adjust accordingly? Just like how she did? Makes me wonder if that insurance company would EVER pay out if there was a flight delay — or would they try to sue the passenger(s) that took out the insurance?
What a scam!
You would have thought they would have caught on after I dunno the first 40 claims?
The Pacific rim is the most racist part of the Earth. God forbid if you marry outside of your race or practice a religion your dictator doesnt agree with. As far as this lady goes, good for her. Eff the insurance companies
@Jason-the penalty for many serious white collar crimes in China is a bullet to the back of the head. Would you want to test the “system” with a scam of this scale?
Most trip delay coverage I see only reimburses actual out of pocket costs for non-refundable trip items and doesn’t include food or lodging for delays at your origin airport. I didn’t think there was cash to be made on insurance?
In China AA would have had me arrested for using legal vouchers to get credit card bonus miles. Glad to be living in the US where they can just steal the miles.
@Steve – Reminder, the USA is on the Pacific Rim, but maybe that’s your point.