Planning to Lose That Airplane Seat?

The airlines are on to a new game to maintain profitability - they are taking planes out of routes, they are cutting capacity. Why should that make them more profitable? Only because that will bring a bit of scarcity into the flying game. On any route, there will perhaps be 95 seats only to every 100 passengers who wants to fly. This is a scenario that will raise prices. Higher prices translate into more profitability. While this might be true, it does place the flying public in a predicament of kinds. Delta plans to cut 25% on flights to Europe; at US Airways, that figure will be something like 1%; for United, it'll be perhaps 5%. They will still be selling as many tickets as before; but now, there will be more people left standing with an airplane ticket but no airplane seat. They will be bumped. What are we going to do?

Airlines overbook flights to help make sure that when some passengers don't show up for a flight, that they won't have to fly empty seats. But if everyone does show up, airlines have no choice but to deny a few people an airplane seat. If you agree to be bumped voluntarily though, you get some kind of a gift like a free ticket or something. Still, about 1% of all passengers get bumped, and not all of them voluntarily.

Thankfully, for some passengers, giving up their airplane seat can be kind of a profitable opportunity. There are some people who kind of look forward to the opportunity, and being bumped has made them thousands of dollars in free flight vouchers. They get these things compensation for the inconvenience they were put to. Theee are people who actually try to book tickets on crowded flights at times that are known to be crowded. They know that the airline will have overbooked some seats and that they are chances of getting bumped for high. When they get to the airport, they place themselves first in line when the airline asks for volunteers who wish to be bumped. And then they collect free vouchers. In a time when airline seat prices seem to keep rising for what appear to be nonexistent facilities, this can be a great way to get back at the system.

If you want to try this kind of thing to earn a few extra rewards, this is what you do. Tell the gate agent or the person who gives you your boarding card that you wish to be considered for any bumping there might be going on. Make sure that you buy a ticket for a flight that goes through some kind of a busy hub. If you buy a ticket on a flight that stops over at Chicago O'Hare for instance, you can pretty certain that the airline will have overbooked a few seats to adjust for the possibility that the international passengers coming to the flight to connect won't show up. If they do all show up (because their flights arrived on time), the airline will be asking for a few volunteers for the bumping process. Buying an airplane seat on the redeye is likely to get you bumped; that's because that's a flight that everyone who was bumped through the day or who had their flights canceled or something, waits to take. Chances are excellent that the airplane will run out of seats.

And then, you need to do this by flying on the right airline. JetBlue almost never bumps anyone. American Eagle always does.