I was wondering if anyone has experience with getting bumped on Christmas Eve. I'm flying from Grand Rapids to Tampa Bay via ORD on 12/24. I purposely picked the earliest available flight so to try and get bumped as many times as possible. Any ideas on what my chances are?

cosmo,

Why 50 / 50 of course. Either you get the bump, or you don't. BTW, this is NY street logic!

Last year I had a 4:00 flight from IAD to LAX. It was about 50% full.

Dan

Dhammer53, it's not 50% (never heard of "NY street logic"). Just because there are two possible outcomes A and B doesn't mean the probability of it being A is 50%.

Looking at the calendar I'd speculate that Christmas Eve bumps aren't going to be very likely this year -- if you're after a bump other than the noise caused by Santa's sleigh landing on your roof you'll have better odds flying on the afternoon/evening of Dec. 21 or the morning of Dec. 22.

Why? Because this year Christmas falls on a Tuesday, meaning Christmas Eve is Monday and meaning a lot of people will be taking that day off and meaning they'll be starting their holidays by flying the previous Friday evening the 21st and Saturday morning the 22nd.

Of course, there are plenty of variables that can mean that any airline needs volunteers on any flight...I just wouldn't get my hopes up for a flight on Christmas Eve.

What Greg Said. Most prople will travel on Saturday and return Tuesday evening or Wednesday unless they are staying the entire week. This gives them the Saturday night stay.

If not, they will fly sunday to avoid the rush on Christmas Eve.

I think the airports will be very slow all day Monday and Tuesday morning.

Im flying Sunday night the 23rd BDL LAS, returning 12/31. According to the seating charts, the flights are only half full.

When I checked, it's cheaper than flying 12/24 PM. The reservation person was incredulous that I would be willing to fly 12/24 at night - right up until I ordered the kosher meals.

Wouldnt care about getting bumped on the return, there's 5 of us!

BTW - only 25 shopping days to Hanukah!

I've almost always gotten bumped (voluntarily) the day before the first day back at work after new year's. Like, if the first day back at work is Jan 3/Monday (I'm just making dates up here) then Jan 2 is an excellent day to play "bump roulette".


Of course, all that could change this year with shifting travel patterns and less pax flying.

AS Im writing this I know I might get slammed but I dont care, over 5,000 people got bumped on 9/11 and over 200 people got bumped this week. Why dont we just be grateful that we are still alive and to respect those people that got bumped. They got bump permanently. Enough SAID

DHammer - I think JS doesn't get it. But I do. I came to your exact same conclusion while I was in college 13 years ago (studying a statistics heavy curriculum). I even use that saying with clients today when they ask the probability of a certain outcome. Some of them get the tongue-in-cheek reply, some don't...

ernestb,

while i share your sentiment toward those who lost their lives in the attacks and accident, this is a forum relating to the discussion of all things travel (and, in this case, bumping). life must go on, so if you don't want to talk about this stuff, don't drop in this forum.

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The three words I never want to hear: 'Full Y Fare'

I'm flying sunday 23 as well, and picked an early afternoon flight. I'm hoping for a multiple-bump opportunity, and am pretty confident that getting through on the 24th wouldn't be very hard because it's a monday.

I'm also doing the sunday after new years', hoping to get bumped a few times again. Since my work travel has scaled back some, I need to rack up some vouchers to finance this habit!

uh...yes it does...it exactly means that...

OK, let's say you enter a raffle where 1000 tickets are sold and buy 1 ticket. There are two possible outcomes. You win or you lose.

Do you think it's really a 50-50 chance? Or is it 1 in 1000?

Using that logic, since everybody here is so intent on focusing on the odds of dying in air travel versus car travel, in a given trip from point a to point b there are only two outcomes, I am alive or I am dead. So then the odds of me dying during that particular trip is the same for a car and plane trip, and it's 50/50? And that half of the people on every plant, train, and automobile dies during the journey?

For that matter, since there are only two states, alive and dead, then everybody I see around me now only has a 50% chance of being alive in the morning. It's going to be hell over the holidays.

I either get a tax audit or I don't, I must be lucky, because the odds were 50/50 and I've been filing for 26 years, I have missed 13 of them. Either my house will have burned down or it hasn't today.

Either this logic makes any sense or it doesn't.

Actually way too much said. Many of those people also had computers and will never use them again, so you should stay off yours until the proper mourning time has passed.