Also with Lufthansa, from Frankfurt to Hong Kong I was standing by for a first class seat, but had to give up my c-class seat because they were overbooked (I like living dangerously). My F-class seat didn't come off and I had given up my c-class seat and ended up in Y! They blocked three seats for me, refunded the difference in the fare and gave me DM 1200 in vouchers (I could also have taken half in cash).

Me and my ex-girlfriend were bumped off an early Lufthansa flight from Munich to London Heathrow (LHR) in July last year. We were told at checkin that the flight was overbooked, and at the gate the lady gave us the following options:

1) Take a flight to London Stanstead leaving around the same time, and recieve a free bus transfer to LHR (we were connecting at LHR with AirNZ for a flight to Fiji) - any of you who have taken a bus between STD and LHR in London's morning traffic before can imagine my reply to the agent
2) Wait, and maybe get on our original flight
3) accept DM600 in Lufthansa travel coupons (the return flight cost around DM350, so DM600 is a really good compensation)

After hassling us a bit they eventually gave us the coupons and put us on the next flight to LHR. We waited in the biz lounge, I was upgraded to biz class and my girlfriend sat in the cockpit jumpseat - Lufthansa occasionally does this on hopelessly overbooked flights. The vouchers, by the way, are in DM150 denominations, and each voucher can be individually redeemed either for travel or DM75 in cash. One unpublished perk is that a few rules seemed to be waived when you pay with vouchers - you can pay at the last minute, they will hold your reservation with no cancelling fee etc. I would definately go for the compensation package on LH's overbooked flights.

Cheers, Zac

Really a good compensation.
Reading all the last posts, I am a bit surprised: lot of good deals.
I often flight, ans a third of my time in Europe, I was bumped twice, once by Air France, once by Northwest, and both time I had to write letters and letters, and I got:
1/ a very good compensation with Northwest after 3 months, and a Northwest employee that was fired or moved (800 $ for a transatlantic, plus an invitation for 2 in a good restaurant in Paris),
2/ 5000 miles , and then 2000 miles for Air France (!!!!)
I said, I had really bad time with both, but Northwest really recognized they were bad, but Air France (2 years ago) was far from recognizing their bad service.

So, my conclusion is that I suspect that people with bad experiences do not participate...
<May be also that I am wrong, and european companies have grreatly improved these last months.
In both case, I think it would be good to know.

Best we had was with KLM Uk. We volunteered out two seat on an ATR72 from CDG-STN. We accepted two free tickets each anywhere on the KLM UK system, we were flown to LHR 20 mins later upgraded to C on BD, we were met at the gate walked throught to a cab to take us to STN to collect our car. I was impressed1

I volunteered last week from Estonian Air Copenhagen-Tallinn flight and received 115 USD in cash, confirmed seat to next flight, overnight say at Radisson SAS hotel, two meals, survival kits (my bags flew to Tallinn), free phone call and taxi vouchers to and from hotel.

After arrival to Tallinn I asked (just out of curiosity) why compensation was 115 USD and not 150 EUR as it is supposed to be, and OV paid me difference between 115 USD and 150 EUR.

On a SK flight AMS-OSL, I was offered NLG 250,- cash or double in SK voucher to fly AMS-CPH-OSL instead and arrive some 70 minutes later. I took the voucher as it was in the evening and I wasn't in a hurry to get to the hotel, my meeting wasn't until the following morning.

A discussion from a few months ago ...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum6/HTML/000170.html

As noted here before LH gives DM 1200 in vouchers for longhauls, and DM 600 for intra-european and DM 300 for domestic flights in GER....