Originally Posted by
mtbaker
Back in '95, I worked on a project in New Haven - there were a large number of us flying from DC to CT every week.
I was right out of college and had just started flying so I certainly didn't know how to work the system back then.
Each Monday morning there was a 7:40am IAD-HVN flight (J31 - 19 seats!) and a 7:55am flight IAD-BDL. The HVN flight was oversold almost every week, so one of my coworkers made this his routine:
Book the HVN flight, take the VDB, take the BDL flight, and get a ride down to New Haven from Hartford with other coworkers who were already booked on the Hartford flight.
I don't know how many free tickets or vouchers he ended up receiving but I'm sure it was quite a lot. Don't know if this would be allowed today (would you get flagged if you took to many VDB's??), but I guess back then there was no limit...
What airline was this? Did UA fly to HVN before? Did that airline go from overselling every flight to HVN, to not being able to sell enough of 19 seats to be profitable?