Last week, an American studies teacher in a magnet school was bumped from an AA DCA-MSP flight. He and one other adult were serving as the only chaperones for a group of sixteen students, aged 11 to 14. The AA GA seems to have been aware of the group's situation as he was called to the podium as "Chaperone Westpfahl" to apologetically be told that he had been "randomly selected" to be taken off the overbooked flight.

A halfhearted call for volunteers not mentioning the student group's situation did not result in anyone offering to stay overnight and take the next morning's flight.

AA gave him a hotel room and a voucher (not money), reportedly for $525.

The AA computer system apparently indicates that this was a VDB rather than an IDB.

ADDED: I personally composed this post myself. It is not a quote from any media source, online or otherwise. I wrote it after first attempting to verify that the incident had not previously been discussed on FT and placed it in the AA forum as this seemed to be appropriate. My post is a summary, in my own words, of material from various Twin Cities media as well as some personal discussions I've had with others (although I will not give names of other people with whom I have discussed this topic in casual conversations as doing so might compromise my identity). The story seems to generally be circulating around the Twin Cities and does not appear to be "fake news" although not all of the details are clear.

Media sources include local TV news coverage (programs today from among KSTP, WCCO, KMSP, KARE11, and KFTC/9+) that I caught briefly (heard) today while multitasking and an article that I skimmed in the print edition of the StarTribune, April 12, 2019. I know from personal observation that these sources tend to update/expand/enhance/correct their coverage at irregular intervals, so I have no way to document the precise version of the news coverage that I may have seen. All of these are live TV broadcasts and, for example, if a story is repeated several times in the course of morning coverage, the reporters and anchors tend to use somewhat different words each time, with no indication of which version is posted on the station websites when/if a videoclip does appear and similarly, for articles posted in words, there is no attempt to make the words absolutely identical to what was said during the live broadcast.

DISCLOSURE: I do not know the teacher/chaperone who was bumped, nor do I know the other chaperone (who AFAIK has not been publicly identified), any of the students, their parents, or any staff and/or officials from the school. Indeed, AFAIK I have never met any employees of Republic Airlines. The only AA employees I have ever met were executives who participated in some FT DOs and similar events, although I did know some TWA employees long ago.

That’s pretty disgusting. They probably told him he had no choice, but entered it in as a VDB.

AA certainly prefers that its IDB stats look low and the GA might also have a more direct incentive to use VDBs rather than IDBs. I could imagine a GA just deciding to call an IDB a VDB instead, and I could also envision a GA trying to convince a passenger who has been IDBed that the compensation for a VDB would be better for the same result, namely the customer not being on the flight.

If someone doesn't travel often or doesn't know AA policies, it would be easy for that customer to be intimidated at the gate.

I wonder whether the field trip tickets were booked as a group, whether parents were told to just book their kids' tickets on these particular flights themselves, or whether there were several PNRs. If either it was officially a group booking or if there were adults and kids together on a PNR, this should have flagged the situation so that AA would have found someone else to bump. It's not obvious to me that the school necessarily would have used a travel agent experienced in booking group travel for schools. ADDED: The teacher had $472 RT ticket in basic economy.

ADDED: It seems to have been AA 4502 operated by Republic, with scheduled departure 10:00 pm from DCA, normally scheduled to arrive into MSP at 11:50 pm. On Friday April 5, it was a couple hours late. Flightaware shows an Embraer 175 with no obvious aircraft change to a smaller flight. The other nonstop is very early in the morning and none of the articles mention a sole chaperone managing a connection at some AA hub, so I'm tempted to asssume that this was the flight, although it seems awfully late for middle school kids, and rather inconvenient for parents who must retrieve them at the airport after midnight. [The other nonstop, also a Republic ERC=175, is scheduled for the morning, so the teacher shouldn't have still been at DCA airport at 11 pm sending emails to the parents of his kids.]

ADDED: Nothing here is a quote; these are my words and my opinions. The $472 ticket cost has been reported in various sources without attribution or citation. I looked at google flights, the AA website, and flightaware myself to do this "research" and I supplied the logic in reaching my conclusion regarding what flight the students took.

This angers me more than the fact that they bumped him. How obnoxious can AA be? Hope someone helps this guy out and he gets proper IDB compensation. Unreal what GAs get away with.