What's a fair compensation for being bumped off?
 

Hi everybody,
I'm a long time reader but never posted before. This Thursday I have CO flight from TLV to EWR, which seems full, and as I'm not late to any meetings I don't mind being bumped off for a fair compensation. The next flight would be 12 hours later, I have a OnePass account but I'm not elite or anything.
What would be a fair compensation for something like that?

(Dr Evil) 1 million dollars!

and seriously? A free ticker? vouchers? how does it work in continental? I got bumped off in El Al once and they gave me a free return ticket to any destination based on availability. What should I expect?

What the Market Will Accept.......
 

JersalemS

Welcome to FT!!!

Continental gives vouchers which are redeemable on CO (and transferable).

For an int'l flight like TLV-EWR.....I would think $500 would be fair.
However, the GAs may start at $300, just to see if they get any takers.

Good luck and let us know what happens.

Safe Travels,
Billiken

I can tell you right now: LY's bumping policy is legendary. Don't expect anything close to that anywhere else. On CO they will put you on the next flight, and probably give you some Continental Currency (probably one, though you could probably request a couple more) which are each good for one alcoholic drink. In addition, up to $800 of travel credit, good for one year, though it might be less. I've heard them offering as little as $300, but I think that was a domestic flight. would expect in the range of $500 though.

It looks like you're asking about a voluntary bump, that is, they call for volunteers and you raise you hand. In that case, they will set the compensation and you can agree or not. On domestic oversell situations, it usually starts around $250 and goes to $500--this is, of course, not cash, but rather a CO travel voucher. Internationally, it might start a little higher, but if you're feeling like staying another day, the real question is how much is it worth to you? And the higher it goes, the more likely someone will take it, so you might want to have a "squeal point" established in your mind, lest you lose out entirely.

The OP mentioned LY, so I started with LY. They always oversell the TLV-JFK routes and vice versa, and usually the EWR routes as well. There, pax (and people who fly often, not even FFs, with LY know to do this) try to check-in as early as possible to volunteer to be bumped. If succesful, they automatically receive one free roundtrip flight on LY that's good for minimum of a year, as well as generally a bump to C or even F on the next flight offered by LY. That's what I was saying...that the LY concept doesn't exist on practically any other airline.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I'll update as to what happens, the one thing that would make this more appealing would be if the vouchers would apply for any star alliance member, or any order on continental website.
I think I'll try to negotiate with them towards that, as I have no plans to go to the US in the near future.

Are you flying coach?

Ask them to put you in business on that next available flight.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.55 Safari/533.4)

An IDB for CO3696 (=AC8120 =QX_something) had a compensation of 200 CND, but that was very generous of them and honestly, they could've just given nothing and that'd been that.

That sounds about right. A friend of mine accepted a bump BOS-IAH early last month and got $300. Aparently the self service kiosk prompted him to volunteer which he did. Of course, he called me while he was at Logan and I advised he ask for a UG in addition but he was unsuccessful in that. But he did get a currency coupon without asking.

Man LY seems to offer very generous bumps. Is it a free r/t from anywhere in the LY system to anywhere in LY system?

I don't think you have any latitude for negotiation re: any Star Alliance member. My memory tells me that those vouchers are good for Continental and Continental Express flights only. As others have mentioned though, you *may* be able to negotiate for a BF upgrade on the next flight (plus the voucher.)

Note that, whatever you do, have it all done BEFORE you leave the gate agent (i.e. voucher in hand, new BF boarding pass for the next flight, etc.) I've heard of agents making "deals" that they are not authorized to make, like miles, future upgrades, etc.

About 15 years ago I volunteered for a bump in Honolulu (SFO to Guam). I was given vouchers for hotel and food and told I'd be on the flight the next day. When I went back to the airport the next day, they said I couldn't get on to the flight. They gave me more hotel vouchers and told me to come back the next (third) day. I argued with them for a while but I didn't have a boarding pass and there wasn't much I could do about it. Once I settled into the idea it was no problem and I just enjoyed another day at the beach.

It's never happened to me since, but I'm always careful to confirm exactly when I'd be flying out before accepting the "bump".

You can ask for whatever you want. A meeelion dollars, an upgrade to BusinessFirst on the next flight, whatever. They'll only agree to the least they can offer to get enough volunteers to take the bump. If the flight is very oversold and they need a lot of volunteers, they'll probably have to offer more compensation. If they need only one volunteer, there will probably someone willing to take it for a $200 voucher. It's probably unusual for passengers to get much negotiating leverage.

UA offered me a free ticket within the US with no restrictions...