Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
5. Also, note that the USA DOT rules only apply if your case satisfies their criteria for IDB, which included the requirement that the flight must be oversold. I suspect that you may have lost the seat because standby passengers were cleared onto the flight, although it would help if you could tell us how much time there was between scheduled departure time and when you reached KLM.
6. DL can argue that you didn't have a ticket, even if this was due to a system error.
That is one of my issues with IDB years ago, I had a flight where my outbound had issues and they DL rebooked me on another airline. When I showed up at the airport for my return, the ticket had been cancelled, since and had not taken the outbound. and my original return flights were sold out and had to take a much later flight. I did contact the FAA later, and argued the system error was caused by DL so unsure how they A) get a free pass on that and B) did not force me on the original flight since I had a confirmed reservation. This was during the merger so I was Northwest PLT at the time, versus DL. I am sure if I was DL I would have had a different result.