Booked my thanksgiving trip long time ago hoping for bumps. However, Delta is really doing a good job by filling the plane just to full.
Failure:
November 24, 2004
DL 1493 BWI-CVG 05:55PM, Plane is completely full
DL 5317 CVG-MKE 08:55PM, Plane is completely full
(I double-checked with ticketing agents before going to gate and knew that these two flights were just full)
November 28, 2004
DL 1485 CMH-CVG 05:05PM, Plane is not full
DL 0949 CVG-BWI 07:20PM, Plane is completely full
DL0949 was a very promising one for bumping because it was overbooked long before the departure date, even at 2 hours before departure, it was still overbooked by 6. However, due to some misconnections from some snow-affected areas, a few passengers could not make for DL0949, which destroyed the gold chance of bumping. The gate agent returned my boarding pass before boarding began. Last year, all flights from Cincinnati to Baltimore was overbooked on the sunday of thanksgiving holiday, even the last two flights on Saturday evening. I ended up with $1200 DL voucher last year but $0 this year
. It looks to me that DL is smarter this year.