Getting bumped
 

I booked my tickets for hawaii on miles to fly out tomorrow and I just got a call from United saying I was bumped to a flight the next day. Can they do this ? I've prepaid my hotel already and will lose out on that as well.

Don't understand why you would be bumped from the flight tomorrow.

ITN does not show any goose eggs for any flights from LAX/SFO/DEN-HNL (don't know your departure city).

I would first check your itinerary online to see if you really did get bumped to 1/2/04 and if you did, call UA back and demand a reason.

If the reason doesn't work, ask for compensation for your hotel room...

Unless you're some sort of security risk on the 1st, I see no reason to bump you off any of the flights on the 1st. If the flight that you're on is somehow oversold (and I doubt that), you should be able to reroute yourself on flights that should be more suitable for you.

Lastly, this question should be asked on the United board and not on MileBuzz.

Welcome to Flyertalk!

aloha

They can't do it without your consent.

They must ask for volunteers at boarrding time, what you should have done is show up at the airport anyway for your original flight.

I say don't accept any changes that the person calling on the phone wants to do.

Then after finishing that phone call, call or log onto the airline and find out whether the flights were cancelled.

If the flights were cancelled, then rebook.

Travel tips:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm

Alternatively you can ask immediately what the compensation for being bumped will be. This is tricky because there is no way to give you your voucher over the phone and also you can[t get written confirmation of what was agreed upon over the phone. Better to actually go to the airport and volunteer if that is what you want to do.




[This message has been edited by AllanJ (edited Jan 01, 2004).]

Obviously they can do it as they have done it. Did they give you a reason?

I'm wondering too if getting the flight with miles put you in the front of the bump line.

I find it strange they would do it a day early instead of letting you standby just in case.

Are you sure they bumped you, that the plane is full and they don't have room for you, or did they cancel the flights for tomorrow and have to move you to another day? Two totally different things.

If it's a bump, then they should be offering you some compensation, dollars, free trip, etc.

Another possibility is that they meant to ask "would you like to be moved to...?" and something was lost in translation. That has happened to me, once with an offer to change to the date I would have chosen myself, had the fares at the time not been much higher!

If the flight is operating and you show up for it in time, they should put you on it. So you might want to take this as a wake-up call to get there really early, since it's so overbooked that they're dialing for bumps.

Also, if your miles came from enough flying for you to have elite status, you might want to call that desk to find out what's really going on. Unless the entire plane is full of elite pax, hardly likely to such a popular vacation destination this time of year, status should count for something when they decide who gets on and who's left behind.

These "day before" or "two am" phone calls to other passengers are making it more difficult for volunteers like me to score free tickets and vouchers.

I can't blame the airlines because "if ya don't ask ya don't git"

Passengers need to know their rights and not take the word from the person making the phone call that there is no choice about being bumped.

Who's giving free tickets anymore?

Last few times I've been offered a measly $100 to $200. Never seemed worth it.

Sometimes this happens when a plane is down for maintenance and they have to reschedule the whole plane full of people. I have been called in this way twice.

Delta was at Thanksgiving, a family of six scored six tickets on one of our flights and was so happy

b][/QUOTE]
Who's giving free tickets anymore?

Last few times I've been offered a measly $100 to $200. Never seemed worth it.[/B][/QUOTE]

United, at least over Thanksgiving. They asked for 10 VDBs on my flight to PDX from SFO.

Kate

I got a free ticket from United by volunteering to wait a couple of hours in Denver for the next flight to New York early in December. Almost got another free ticket from United on Dec. 28 when their Reno - LAX CRJ flight was oversold - they asked me when I checked in if I wanted to volunteer. But they ended up offloading enough passengers onto the Reno - SFO flight (also CRJ) so they didn't take me. (They would have put me up in a hotel and sent me back to NY via Denver on non-CRJ flights the next day).

[This message has been edited by wildblue (edited Jan 03, 2004).]

Not to drive this totally off-topic, but when did UA re-institute RNO-LAX service? As far as I knew, it has been gone for over a year.

Mike

Thanks for the reports on comps from UA and DL.

FWIW, on my recent horrible DL trip (two posts, one pre-trip, one post-trip), 3 of 4 legs were overbooked. I inquired, and all they offered was $200. It wasn't enough to tempt me especially because I was already not in the mood to fly DL again.

I asked about RTFC, but they said $200 was the best they could do. This was in CVG on Comair/Delta Connection, so that may have had something to do with it.

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited Jan 04, 2004).]

I'd rather have a $200 voucher towards a ticket than a ticket voucher. The round trip vouchers are not upgradeable (at least not on US) and you don't earn miles using them.

Got voluntarily bumped twice on NW in the past 6 months. Both times they offered $300 or free ticket. Both times I got to my final destination same evening, only about 2-3 hours later than scheduled.

I always have a tough choice between free and vouchers. Vouchers I would use for any trip coming up, which is a good thing, but if the offer is for a trip then I look at it for a trip I would not normally have taken, not for one I was planning on anyways.

It's let me get to a few places that I wouldn't have gone.

My break point is in the $400 area, if it's under that then a trip is better, if it's over then vouchers, but I never argue with them.

This was the first time I'd flown to Reno in several years so I really don't know. This was actually SkyWest operating for United Express.

I flew NW on New Year's Eve (evening) IAH to AUS, and they were offering $300 plus hotel room for volunteers. A group very happily volunteered, but in the end the airline was able to find a seat for everyone.



[This message has been edited by Middle_Seat (edited Jan 04, 2004).]

Unfortunately, per NW rules, nothing over $300 in TCVs are offered http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Most other carriers offer large amounts when many volunteers are needed... namely AA/UA

aloha

Well, it's still a new one on me, as the only SkyWest service out of RNO has been to SFO, EKO and SLC for a while now - and neither UA nor SkyWest reflect the service at all on their websites.

Mike

We bumped ourselves (total of three of us) Christmas night on a CO flight out of IAH. We each received a $400 voucher plus dinner, breakfast and the hotel. We arrived at 11:30 am instead of 11:30 pm - so we missed maybe three hours with the family. Now if the airfares to Wurope would come down we'd spend spring break across the pond.

Remember to submit your bump details on www.bumptracker.com

Quote:
"We arrived at 11:30 am instead of 11:30 pm--so we missed maybe three hours with the family."

How is that three hours?

Seems to me that if they had arrived at 11:30 pm they would have gone to sleep, gotten up the next morning, and started family time at 8:30 or later, so it's three a.m. hours. The rest of the time they'd have been sleeping.

It'll be interesting to see what sona has to say after returning from the trip.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd mention that Mrs. FCG and I were bumped quite a bit over the holidays:
-Dec. 27 MKE-DEN on UA (free tix ea, offered $200 UA$)
-Dec. 27 MSP-ABQ on NW (free tix ea, offered $300 NW$)
-Dec. 29 ABQ-PHX on AW ($400 AW$ ea, actually an involuntary bump)

And yes, I entered them on bumptracker! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif I also wanted to mention (brag) that we once got $1200 each from Northwest for a 24-hr bump. Ah, the good ol' days...

-fcg