Originally Posted by gldwebs
Wow, this thread got a little more out of hand than I was expecting. This thought only really came to my mind a few months ago. My parents needed desperate computer help so I used a free miles ticket to go to EWR (i hate flying and not accruing miles). On the way home my flight got cancelled and I was rebooked on an oversell. The $300 voucher made my trip feel much better because I could use it for a nice mile run. Now I do have to state that I am a very busy person and do not want to sit at an airport just waiting for a bump (although this makes me think I could do this just to get past security when excorting an elderly relative...), but I do want to state that this situation became interesting today. I have 2 award tix (wife and I) from ORD-EWR. Flights were $300 each, and it just wasnt worth paying, so I booked NW out and CO back on standard award. I found out today the return right after mine was VERY oversold and had only 2 tix left to be had, so I ponied up 25,000 extra miles (12,500 each) for rulebusters on that flight. I AM planning on flying, but I changed figuring that I can turn the extra miles into 2 vouchers for 2 mile runs. Not as bad as the original idea, but I dont think there really is anything wrong with this (heck, if there was standard avail for this later flight I might have booked it any). So is it wrong that I gambled an extra 25,000 miles for this?
Nothing wrong as long as you know it's a gamble. I've been on plenty of flights that showed F0 Y0 before take-off but departed with empty seats (this happens much more often than flights that need bumps). You basically spent 25,000 miles (that you value at $300 or less) hoping that you'll get up to $600 of bump vouchers (if one of you is bumped, then it's a push).