Originally Posted by
avidflyer
A bump is when you volunteer to take a later flight when you are on a plane that is overbooked. The usual Domestic "Bump" is $300.00 a hotel room if overnighting, a meal voucher ($10) and **sometimes** you will get put in FC for taking the "bump". If you are skilled at finding oversold flights you can rack up some big $$. I do not look for bumps but one lucky weekend I made $900, got a free hotel room, cab ride, dinner, and all in FC (I was there anyway though)
They will often offer a free RT ticket, but most of us prefer the $300 voucher because the free ticket comes out of W (award) inventory (which is harder to book) and you don't earn any FF miles on trips using the free RT voucher. If they offer one voucher and you want the other, ask (sometimes they'll give it to you - other times you only get the one they offered). I usually look for VDBs, by looking at the seat maps for the trips I'm planning on taking (to make a better guess) as well as looking on the days that are historically best in my experience (Fri. for into PHL and out of TPA, Sun. for into TPA). There are a lot of threads on the forums where FTers have discussed their strategies in getting VDBs.