voluntary denied boarding

Tag Archives for voluntary denied boarding.

Involuntary Denied Boarding compensation explained

On August 23, 2011, new passenger protections were introduced, one of which increased the amount of involuntary denied boarding (IDB) compensation. A question was posed during last weekend’s Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminars as to the exact calculation, so I thought I’d go through two examples. First, the new rules are as follows: Domestic flights within…

Continue Reading »

Oversold airline flight? Show up early to volunteer your seat and fly for free

Last month I flew a roundtrip same day mileage run on United Airlines from Los Angeles to St. Louis connecting through San Francisco. It was just an “okay” run since it didn’t net a huge amount of elite qualifying miles. The fare was $160.80 and I received 4,470 EQMs, which comes in at 3.60 cents-per-mile.…

Continue Reading »

“I’ll pay someone $40 for their seat! Please! I have to get on this flight!”

I flew United Airlines from Burbank to San Francisco yesterday morning aboard the usual Skywest-operated CRJ-200. The flight was zeroed out in availability for a couple of days, and the seat map had only two seats left to assign (exit rows), so it indeed was looking full and perhaps in an oversell situation. While I…

Continue Reading »

Delta Air Lines and voluntary denied boarding aka “The Bump”

Last week, I raked in some nice compensation from United Airlines in the form of travel credits by volunteering my seat. Overselling flights has long been a common practice in the airline industry, and the airlines come out the winners much more often than the losers. Having worked in the department that handles this optimization,…

Continue Reading »

Watching stellar United Airlines gate agents in action last night

As I tweeted yesterday, I took a voluntary denied boarding (VDB) off my flight back to LAX last night and earned a $400 travel credit for future use, plus the obligatory hotel and meal voucher. I was dead tired from all my traveling around Europe for a couple of days, and ended up getting a…

Continue Reading »