ARCHIVE: Involuntary Denied Boarding (IDB) Order and Compensation (consolidated)
 

I tried several searches on this and did find a pretty good thread, albeit one that's two years old. So, rather than resurrect that old thread, I'm posting again.

Here's the quote:

Does anyone know if this order is still valid? Here's the situation --

I'm on AA 394 from ORD-LGA Monday morning (6/19.) When I booked the flight, it was showing '7' on several classes on EF but no seat assignments were available.. to me, a sure sign it's oversold. As of today I still haven't been able to pick up a seat assignment. The flight is now 0 across the board on EF and isn't available on aa.com for purchase either.

Most of the other Monday morning runs to LGA are also 0-across on EF, too.

I'm normally one to take any opportunity for a bump but of course this is one of those cases where I have to be in the city late Monday morning (yeah, yeah, fly Sunday night; not an option, long story) and a bump or IDB right now would be pretty inconvenient for me.

I'm guessing most of the people on this plane are EXP or Plat (at minimum) and most of us don't have a lot of flexibility to be in NY later, so volunteers will be at a minimum.. and unless there's a lot of folks connecting from the DEL-ORD overnight, there probably won't be a lot of missed connections.

In honor of some of the AA forum wags, I figure there's a 2.37% chance that someone will be IDB'd/IDBed/IDB'ed. ;) I want to make sure I'm in the other 97.63%. I will be doing OLCI at 7am Sunday morning and will be at ORD at least an hour before flight time (although I might be in the Starbucks line for a lot longer, knowing Monday morning at ORD... :rolleyes:)

djk7 also posted there, and included this spiffy link to the DOT's "Fly-Rights - A Consumer Guide to Air Travel" (link direct to the Overbooking section, which includes "Involuntary Bumping.")

I'd also keep an eye on those seat charts - if there are any upgrades, check at 100, 72 and 24 hour windows and soon thereafter, in case someone got their upgrade and vacated (preferably an exit row) seat.

The comp is fine.. but I'd like to actually avoid even being in the situation that I have to fight for comp. That's what most of the other threads seemed to be.. the whole "I got IDBed, they screwed me and gave me a voucher for $6.23..." thing.

We're inside the 100 and 72 hour windows.. when I booked last week, it was F0 A0. I can't imagine that anyone's getting upgraded here, let alone Golds.. but it never hurts!

One note is that you can't OLCI w/o a seat assignment. So you may be at the tail end of the line for EXP/Plat. But I figure even then there have to be many people more bumpable than you. Still, probably want to be at the gate as early as possible. Certainly by the time the GA gets there.

Wheelchair.

Also remember that AA blocks some seats for airport control. I would suggest the following:

1. As JDiver suggests, check the seat maps on the flight early and often. As you said there probably wont be upgraders, but people could cancel/change their reservation.

2. Call AA perhaps once a day and ask if they can release a seat assignment to you. I've known people you have had seat assignments released at the 24 hour mark by AA.

3. Arrive at the airport early, check-in with an AAgent and try to get a seat assigned, inquire about seats under airport control.

Good luck!

Too bad our "fat old man softball" league isn't playing tomorrow due to Father's Day. I may have had to arrange a temporary injury of some sort. :D

Anyhow, thanks for the advice. I didn't know about the no-OLCI-without-seat-assignment thing. Can I use the kiosk in the morning or do I have to stand on the line with everyone else? SCChris mentioned talking to an AAgent, but the lines in ORD at 5:30am Monday morning.... ew.

ORD ticket counters open at 4am :p

And the AC opens at 5am.

Maybe plan to arrive a bit earlier to ORD. ;)

Yes, you can use a kiosk. If it still can't get you a seat assignment, it will print you a departure management card, which will let you get past security.

The DM card will work just fine. So long as I can get past security, that's what matters to me.. I don't care if I get my seat at the AC, the gate, the counter, whatever.

Heck, at this point, I'll even take 32E if I have to (and a fresh battery in my ANR headset) -- I just need to get there for final interview/salary negotiations. *fingers crossed*

Dude... just chill. focus on your interview, not your seat assignment

I think that an hour early might just not be early enough. Try for at least 2 if not more, if you really need to be on the plane.

i wouldn't be overly concerned -- i've been flying the monday aa394 for the past six months. most of the time is has been nearly sold out or oversold, but rarely have i seen anyone involuntarily denied boarding. there are usually a couple people willing take compensation.

don't expect seats to become available through upgrades. first class is often fully occupied days in advance. be _very_ friendly with the GAs, who are usually frustrated after putting (or denying) 30-40 elite requests to be put on the upgrade list. i can't remember the last time i was upgraded.

I'm not even going to ask to be on the list.. I know there's no chance unless some sort of computer glitch knocks all EXPs back to base members or something like that. Isn't gonna happen.

But this is what's good about FT -- people who have actually been on these flights on a regular basis!

I'm not too worried about the interview. It's the fourth one, more of a "meet the senior managers in your new division" sort of thing, but it still looks bad to call from ORD and say, "Sorry, I'll be late, ask the town car to wait; I got IDBed" :D

I just pulled up the seat map for F. There are 8 F seats available. Call and upgrade.

What seat map, aa.com?

EF's shows one F seat available but it's still 0'ed out across the board. I called the Plat non-desk and got the "It's going to be under airport assignment" spiel...

If you're on AA394, why don't you get your seat assignment (if possible) but, regardless, stand by for AA398? AA398 leaves a mere 55 minutes before AA394.

Then, in the extremely unlikely event disaster strikes, and you don't fly AA398 or AA394, AA376 leaves a mere 40 minutes after AA394. AA376 currently has 3 unassigned seats.

In other words, you're Platinum and you have three Super 80s all headed between the same two airports and leaving well within a 2 hour window, with a confirmed reservation on the middle flight. I think you're getting a seat, especially if you stand by for the first flight.

Whether you get to New York in time is another question, but the one major factor, weather, looks just fine for Monday morning at both O'Hare and LaGuardia.

I will do just that. An excellent suggestion that, believe it or not, I let myself lose sight of. I have no idea why. :confused:

If you have access to EF, determining load factors based on aa.com is sort of like rubbing two sticks together when you have a blow-torch.

It was aa.com

Based on my experiences, if you check the online seat map regularly today (say, every hour or two), I'd be surprised if at some point a seat doesn't open up.

And I'd be surprised, if worst case, a PLT gets an IDB.

Plus, flying out of a hub on a Monday morning, there's a good chance that a few connecting pax will misconnect.

Still, the standby for the earlier flight is not a bad suggestion.

And a bit off topic, but FWIW, I was recently on a morning flight that was F0 Y0 from a week prior thru the night before, and when I got to the airport, I was astonished to see that my upgrade had cleared overnight.

this happens to me all the time
 

I fly ORD-LGA and ORD-LAS all the time. Every time I book I can't get a seat assignment so it appears to be oversold. Every time around the 72 hour mark a seat opens up (oftentimes the Exit Row) because some EXP or PLAT got upgraded. Very rarely does AA oversell a plane and then have to bump someone off the flight involuntarily.

I would just keep on checking each day until your flight. A seat more than likely will open up.

Result - crappy middle seat but got there.
 

I ended up with 19E - not as far back as I thought I'd get stuck with. The flight was completely full and there were a ton of standbys not accommodated, but I don't think they actually bumped anyone.

More about IDB...?
 

Hi all -

Please go easy - I'm WAY out of FT practice, and I can't remember quite how to tease the search engine to do what I want.

It would seem to me from searching, and from this post, that there hasn't been much written about IDB occurrences and policies. I just went through a whopper, though, with five pax, including two small kids and a senior, and issues that aren't otherwise covered in this thread. I don't want to pollute this one, though, if it's all been talked about somewhere else.

Do any of you know of another post out there somewhere, or should I start typing away?

Start typing away :-) I am curious to learn about your IDB situation.

I think the Involuntary issue should have it's own thread.

Policies and Procedures for Involuntary Denied Boarding
 

I want to be clear that while my situation occurred at AA, I think that it could have occurred with any airline. My personal opinion of AA hasn't yet changed as a result of this situation; I'm waiting to see how AA handles it before I come to any conclusions.

The story is long and messy, so I'm going to try and just give some essentials. I'm also going to leave out the city of origin right now, only because I just sent a letter to AA, and there are three actors to whom I don't want to give an easy opportunity to change their stories before AA corporate has a chance to consider it all.

Approx 3 weeks ago, I was supposed to travel through DFW to MCO; five in my party - two small children and one senior citizen. We were offered a voluntary bump at city of origin, and accepted it with approx 20 minutes to go before departure, in exchange for connecting through ORD, and an assurance from the GA that we would have assigned seats, together, on an ORD-MCO flight approx 4 hours later than originally planned from DFW. I was especially concerned b/c of the children, and the boarding passes he gave us for ORD showed no seat numbers. The GA swore that it was ok, because he had put us in an exit row, and that the GAs in Chicago would be obliged to re-seat us in order to make it legal; he also swore that he had already contacted staff at ORD and received a response assuring all was ok. We took generous comp (in vouchers) for the bump, and flew to ORD.

As I'm sure some of you are now groaning, it was a mistake for me to take this GA at his word. Enough said.

My main reason for sharing the story, however, is b/c of what happened next, as it is an instructive lesson about understanding IDB procedures.

When we arrived at ORD, we quickly learned that we had no seat assignments for the leg to MCO. I begged the GAs to help b/c of the children (aside from having no luggage w/us, etc., we were on our way to Disney and a family member had paid for a costly travel package) but also told them I was just going to stand by the podium and wait, allowing them to work their flight without me constantly badgering.

The GAs offered several hundred $ to pax willing to take a voluntary bump from that flight (ORD-MCO). They announced it once after I got to the gate, and asked a few last-minute stragglers boarding if they were interested. They knew that the outcome was critical to me. Without warning, however, they shut the jet-bridge door and came back to the podium. I was surprised b/c I thought they might go down to the plane and re-ask some of the boarded pax, many of whom I didn't think had even heard the last $ offer.

I simply said to the GA - "What about us?" She responded "well, you're going to have to fly tomorrow morning". As you can imagine, I was frustrated and upset, but they had so efficiently managed me that the door was closed and I could see there was no way I was getting on the plane. I took some small comfort in thinking we would receive a generous amount of comp. When the GA called (whomever she needed to? Not sure which dept.) to organize our comp, however, she was surprised to learn that we were only going to get $103 in cash, per pax, as compared with several hundred $ each. Of course, I was surprised too.

There's more to the story, but none of it especially relevant other than the fact that I waited around the gate for a manager to come speak with us, she improved upon what the GA did in terms of getting us into the ORD Hilton (rather than long shuttle ride away) and a couple of other nice pieces of assistance.

I was very, very upset, particularly as the GAs and managers insisted that there was nothing they could do once the IDB calculation had been done, b/c it was "prescribed by law", and they insisted that they (AA) could be fined for paying us MORE than the IDB rules required.

I was naturally suspicious of all this, and learned the following. I'm sure this is obvious to the experienced among you, but I'm sharing for others, like me, who didn't know the rules and wish that I had.

It turns out that the Code of Federal Regulations that governs oversales is, in fact, very specific about what it requires in terms of IDB comp, and I'm assuming that AA calculated it correctly in terms of the math (see here). We were all on award tickets, and whatever nominal value AA puts on them seems to have resulted in the small comp that they offered.

What the GAs didn't know, however, were the additional requirements of the code*, that, if they had, would have prevented my problem from worsening.

Summarized, one section of the code requires that "Every carrier shall advise each passenger solicited to volunteer for denied boarding, no later than the time the carrier solicits that passenger to volunteer, whether he or she is in danger of being involuntarily denied boarding and, if so, the compensation the carrier is obligated to pay if the passenger is involuntarily denied boarding.

It turned out that, even though the GAs knew something about the prescription for IDB comp calculation, they had incorrectly assumed prior to calling AA that we would automatically receive the voluntary bump comp they had been offering. Once they called for IDB comp, though, they didn't see any way to correct it.

Aside from their obvious lack of familiarity with the rules, the GAs clearly erred in not:

a) warning me that I was potentially subject to IDB
b) finding out ahead of time what my IDB comp calculation would be
c) giving us the choice of taking voluntary or involuntary IDB comp

(They also erred in not supplying me a written explanation of the IDB rules.)

Again - I'm posting this here b/c it happened on AA, but I don't think any of this was unique to the airline. The morning hijinks were upsetting. Lessons learned. As an Admirals Club Angel said to me about the evening problems, though, "that's a pretty unusual situation" taking into account the IDB, combined with what were award tix with a low notional value. I have to assume that most of the time, based on what others have described as typical voluntary bump comp amounts, if there are IDB situations like this, the calculated comp probably comes out at least even or perhaps much higher than what the voluntary bump sum was. If that happens, failing to follow the notification rules doesn't really hurt anyone.

* The "oversales" section of the law appears as Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Chapter II, Part 250.

I think the intend of the rule is that airline can't hide from you that they have to pay you more cause you are going to get IDB and can't dupe you into taking VDB instead.
In your case, it is the other way around.
I am wondering how many people got IDB was told they may get IDB when the GA was offering VDB.
I guess if follow the rule, GA has to find the pax that may get IDB, told him/her that if no one take VDB then he/her will get IDB for this much prior to ask for volunteer.

Now, go to Expert Flyer and look at AA 2412 for Saturday from LAX-DFW
If you look at availabilty, you will see F4. If you look at the seat map, you will seat there are 15 FC seats remaining, at this moment.
Don't believe the map.

The legal compensation is the MINIMUM they have to give you, not the maximum.
They could have still offered you vouchers for more.

Indeed. I would also say, though, while that part about notifying the IDB pax sounds ominous, I don't think it is. Once it gets down to IDB, they know who it's going to be.

Of course. That was what was so asinine about the whole conversation. I told the manager - Perhaps that's what someone told you, but rest assured, if your company, for whatever reason believes it's in its best interest to pay a pax MORE than the law requires, nobody's going to fine you. Really.

What were you hoping AA would do at this point? I can't tell. If you believe an amount higher than delivered was promised you have a reasonable issue that can be directly articulated and requested of AA. Critiquing the GA's will just confuse the request.

You are replying to a post that is three years old. Inventories have changed.

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my message.

I have already written a letter and sent it to AA and asked them for comp at least equivalent to what I would have received for volunteering to bump. (I put this up on FT mainly to raise the issue of the IDB rules so that others might benefit from my experience of ignorance.)

I'm not sure which element of my message you interpreted as un-useful critique, but IMO, the key to my request for additional comp is that the GAs didn't follow specific, Federal DOT rules. It's not just a whiny "you should pay me because it was a bad experience" request. The fact that they didn't talk to me, etc., is key to the point. If we had been conversing, and I had some inkling that I was about to get IDB'd, then I might have just offered to take it at the time.

Am I misunderstanding YOUR point?

Why will that confuse the request? Part of the reason for the request for additional compensation is that the GA didn't comply with the law.

This is probably a good example of the type of situation worth bringing to the Department of Transportation's attention, too. Hopefully you at least got your $102 in cash...

They gave us $103 per pax, paid via handwritten checks. They were delivered to us by someone apparently in a management/accounting role.

In fact, one of the "extras" that I didn't mention was that I have a 3 1/2 year old who sleeps with "pull-ups". His were by then all sitting at Disney World while we cooled our heels in the L concourse (out of which I almost never fly; I felt like I was on foreign soil). The woman who brought the IDB checks was kind enough to run back to their office and somehow came up with a few pull-ups, which was a lifesaver. The on-duty manager/supervisor also tossed out the Best Western overnight reservation that the GA had provided and got us into the Hilton ORD, for which I was grateful, as well.

By the way - while researching the rules after-the-fact, I was kind of surprised that the GAs and the supervisor, in particular, hadn't been more carefully trained on them. I say that b/c it seems that Delta (?) got fined some few hundred thousand dollars last year (IIRC) for a series IDB related violations that spanned six months or some such. I would have thought that would at least trigger some memos.

Perhaps you did; perhaps you didn't.

My point being you have a clean compensation issue that is in the top 2% of seeming validity and way better than the average FT compensation thread, so why complicate it? I would have echoed the frequent advice found on FT to stick to the most basic facts (promised a seat for VDB, then IDB'd, then not paid the final offer), ask for the bucks now, and close. If I could document any unrecovered expense for arriving late in Mickeyville I might even toss that in too, and hope for a few AAdvantage pacification points.

Sounds like you have already gone the detailed complaint route. Sorry to have provoked you to caps trying to help. Let us know what they say.

The point still applies. The seat map, even in First doesn't always reflect the number of seats available for sale. The thread was already resurrected, so it's not like my post made much of a difference.

.
I gave up a seat on the last LAX-SJC flight last Monday night
They didn't push very much for volunteers and at least one guy got IDB'd
He ended up on the SFO flight and he shared the shuttle with me to SJC
They paid him $225, but would have given him a $350 voucher. They offered $200 for vdb to take the SFO flight 35 minutes later (later delayed by about 30 minutes) and shuttle to SJC. I got an upgrade on the fairly new 738.