Originally Posted by
iloveipods
Had a great experience today checking in via the mobile app. I've previously seen the offer to bid on an VDB to be determined at the gate, but on an SFO-EWR today it actually gave me the option for a CONFIRMED $200 VDB bump voucher and rebooking on a different flight. I took the voucher and changed to another flight (that was I was thinking of SDCing to anyway). Looks like they offer it when they know with a high likelihood they’ll need volunteers.
The flight I switched to looks like was also tight on space too, so as I kept checking the app it gave me an option to confirm to another flight for free (same UI/UX experience in app as the VDB offer, but different from the SDC screen). I guess that is the lower tier VDB “offer” – i.e. we’ll waive the SDC fee and maybe booking code requirements to change to another flight.
This is a change I like! I assume there is a web version for this live / in the works.
Not sure, as this appears to have rolled out in the last week or so. I am on SFO-MCO tonight, and it is oversold by 5 people, and I saw the same thing with 3 different backup itineraries, and I was able to bid an amount for each one. I put high numbers in for all of them and submitted it. As time goes, hopefully people will report results here.
My suspicion is that the GA's won't handle anything differently.... for a couple reasons:
1) Too complicated to sort through all this complexity while in a hurry to get people boarded and people switched off the flight.
2) The options presented at OLCI 24 hours in advance may not be available at the time of boarding (which is the case for my situation tonight where almost NOTHING is available on UA).
I am pretty sure that this is a short-lived change, and UA will fall back on the way things have been done for the last couple years.
Thoughts?