Scheduling to Get Bumped from a Flight?
We need to make a round trip from the Los Angeles area to the Washington DC area within the coming month and, since we're retired, we'd like to increase our chances of being bumped to a later flight in exchange for a voucher for more air miles. What what airports, what times or days of the week should we fly to increase those odds? Thanks in advance for your help.
Air Travel - 2 Answers
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1 :
First, choose the airline carefully; each has a different Contract of Carriage or set of rules they have to play by when they bump you. Some, like the legacy carriers (United, AA, Delta, etc) have a partnership with other carriers so if you're bumped off of a United flight and they can't put you on another United flight the same day, they will often put you on another airline's flight. Others like Southwest will not put you on another carrier's plane. Depending on loads, you might be waiting for more than a day (or two or even three) before you can get reacommodated. That said... LA to DC is a pretty heavy-duty business travel day. Your peak loads will be Thursday and Sunday, because most business travellers don't wait till Friday to go home, and they need to be ready to hit the office on Monday morning. There are fewer nonstops into DCA than there are into IAD. You may consider connecting through a big business city like Chicago, to increase your odds. That will give you more flexibility on the timing, too. Unfortunately it is also usually more expensive to fly on Thursdays and Sundays than it would be on, say, a Saturday, so you're taking a bit of a chance... good luck! If you have a travel agent friend you should ask them to look up flights that have low inventory; most websites will not show you how many seats are left on a flight, and the seat maps where you select your seats are not really accurate, but if you can find your inventory, you will have a better chance of booking into an oversold flight.
2 :
The busiest days to travel are Mondays, Fridays and Sundays. When checking in for your flight at the ticket counter you can make the request to be bumped if your flight is full and they will notate this in the system so that the gate agent will be aware. Also tell this request to the gate agent when arriving for your flight at the gate. The trouble is that every airline is different and less and less are giving you much for your time. Nowadays the most commen offering is to have you miss the originally scheduled flight and fly first class to your destination in a few hours. Most airlines are trying to stay away from providing vouchers for free future flights (although it does still happen it's much more rare).
