CO Express Overbooking
 

I am booked on an oversold flight from ALB to CLE in a few weeks. Anyone have experience with what COEX offers? Is it similar to mainline?

Thx.

Carberry

I received $350 for taking a NW flight 30 minutes later after volunteering my seat on a COEX TYS-IAH flight.

(I ended up flying TYS-MEM-AUS in F on NW, so I think that I came out ahead instead of a few hours in a tiny "ExpressJet")

You probably won't get bumped. Coexpress rarely miscalculates seats. However, if they do, I have found the amount offered to be lower. I have gotten $250-300.

Was in EWR a few weeks ago at the Continental Express gates and the flight EWR/PIT was oversold they needed 3 people and were offering only $250 and to be put on a USairways flight 3 hours later.

About a year ago, COEX gave $250 for EWR to PVD.

In my experience on COEX (mostly through IAH, but occasionally CLE), the offers vary greatly. Offers on IAH-BTR usually don't go over $200, since the next flight is usually 2 hours or less away. However, I've seen IAH-SAV (which used to be only an early morning and late evening departure) go up to $500 and still have to involuntarily deny boarding.

Just want to add that CO is supposed to have one of the best inventory management systems for the industry so even a flight is overbooked now, you might still not get bumped.

When agents are really desparate, they agree to a lot of things...

Steven

COEx now has a hard cap of $300 for volunteers without a supervisor's approval.

In CLE I have never seen them start above $250. I wanted to take the bump, yet didn't want to risk losing it waiting for the offer increase - I was the only customer out of all 50 in the boarding area to volunteer. I was rebooked CLE-IND-STL on CO/TW with a arrival into STL nearly 5 hours later - still better then nothing, I guess.

When did that start?

I've never seen/heard anything higher than $250 on CO Express.

But agree with the previous poster who says that CO Express is pretty good with inventory management. Almost all my flights these days is CO Express. The most I've ever seen them oversold is 1 seat - and that is pretty rare.

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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

I wouldn't count on the flight being overbooked. (How do you know that anyway?) Sometimes these Continental Express flights show as sold out because they're holding a few seats for misconnects and the like.

They may also be holding seats for passengers who are connecting at CLE for other destinations. I'm sure that Continental would rather sell a $400 fare for someone flying on to LA then a $100 fare to someone stopping in Cleveland.

Unless things have changed since I worked for HP, the highest offer made, and accepted, has to be given to ALL passengers that voluteered. This means if you voluteered for $200, but they went to $400, you are entitled to the $400 offer. BUT you have to ask. If they refuse, ask to see a copy of the CO Tariff, which they are required by law to have all sites that sell tickets, including gates.



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What do you mean I can't charge my heart bypass to my Visa? I need the MILES!!!

I had a friend on a on an over-sold CO Express PIT-EWR flight, and they were only offered $200 to volunteer. The offer was the same no matter how late the re-route flight was going to be. The person took it, and got routed on another carrier PIT-JFK a couple of hours later. I asked them if they could give the friend $300 or $400 and they said "no, but nice try." They only needed 1 or 2 volunteers.

I believe it began in September of 2000 with a pilot program at CLE. It was later expanded to IAH and EWR in that order and finally systemwide.