Originally Posted by
sts603
Here's what I'm guessing happened:
(2) Flight was overbooked
(3) No one volunteered to take a VDB
AA generally does a good job getting volunteers, but once in a while they're just impossible to find, so you may very well be right here. I had a flight on Labor Day weekend two years ago at SFO where only two of us volunteered and they needed three. No matter how much they begged, AA could not find a third passenger to take a $500 bump. They IDBd the third person and paid him around $600 in check with a reroute in a few hours.
If AA was going to IDB part of a group, there could be some significant cash on the line. From the school's viewpoint, which students should get the money if they went along with this? AA might have been able to work around that if the rerouting had them arrive within a short period (is it within 2 hours or original arrival time to avoid compensation for IDB?).