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The Bump Grind
Cheap Charlie · September 29, 1999

Figuring out how to get bumped when you want to get a free ticket or airline script is an art. It is one of the supreme tests of the true cheap traveler.

Here are the basics: When you manage to get "bumped" from a flight, the most prevalent form of compensation for passengers is a coupon, sometimes called a Denied Boarding Compensation (DBC) coupon, good for a round-trip flight anywhere within the airline’s continental U.S. system (surprisingly, this includes Alaska with some airlines).

But check for restrictions.

-- These Denied Boarding Compensation coupons are normally good throughout the year, but some airlines may restrict their use during high-season blackout periods by requiring you to wait until the last day before issuing the ticket.

-- Some DBC coupons are only for standby transportation.

-- Some DBC coupons will result in First Class transportation. And many times the airlines will fly passengers who volunteered to be bumped First Class on the next flight, depending on availability.

-- Beware: When you volunteer to be bumped and are held back from the flight, the flight crew may find a space once a physical passenger count is completed. In this case you will have to get back on your scheduled flight, but, perhaps, without your original seat. This rarely happens, but it has been reported.

Even with free tickets, many times you will hear the airline personnel upping the ante. If originally the airline needed 10 volunteers and only five passengers volunteered to be bumped, the gate personnel may offer cash as well. It is like an auction, and they seem to start at $200 plus the free ticket.

The top price I have seen, while a passenger, was $500 and a free ticket, which resulted in almost half the plane volunteering. The first one to the airline representative got the deal. Naturally, everyone who had settled for no cash and only a free ticket, or less than $500, felt mistreated. As my brother says, "That’s life on the Ponderosa."

Some fliers have made volunteering to be bumped a part of their check-in routine. As soon as they get to the gate, they ask if the flight is overbooked. If the answer is yes, they let the gate personnel know they are willing to volunteer. This places their name near the top of the list for bumping and getting a free ticket to anywhere in the airline’s continental US system.

One Sunday after Thanksgiving, I managed three free tickets by successfully volunteering to be bumped from three flights in a row. If you have time, it means free transportation for you and makes life more pleasant for the airline personnel.

Recently, airlines have been forced to cancel flights near the end of the month. When this happens, subsequent flights are often overbooked by a far higher percentage than normally allowed by the airlines. This means that chances for getting bumped are higher at the end of the month.

Another technique may be to fly on Saturday when the fewest number of people fly. These flights are historically far less crowded than other days. When airlines must cancel flights, they tend to select those flights that have the lowest load factors -- often this means the Saturday flights.

Whenever a flight is canceled, the opportunities to be bumped on subsequent flights to the same destination increase. Finally, fly on Delta -- according to the latest Department of Transportation statistics, they bumped almost as many passengers as the rest of the major airlines combined.

Good luck collecting free flights. It is a win-win situation. You get free transportation and the airline doesn't have to pull cash out of its registers to pay off those involuntarily bumped.

We'll deal with that kind of compensation next week.

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at cheapch@aol.com or access his Web site.