bumping strategy
 

I'm not sure where to ask this question so feel free to move it to the appropriate forum. We have a trip to Las Vegas planned and decided to try and extend our trip (non-refundable tickets of course). We know the return flight is full, probably oversold. If we volunteer to be bumped, do we have to take the next scheduled flight that has space or can we ask for a return several days later? There are obvious advantages to doing it this way although I realize our success is not guarenteed.

No, they won't allow you to pick a date to fly if they bump you off the flight. They'll put you on the next available flight. So definitely don't count on that. Might want to call the airline and see what the change fee is. You might be surprised and the change fee is small than you think.

there's a great thread on how to get bumped in the Mileage Run forum.

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It depends on the gate agent. I got bumped out of a busy holiday weekend in Jacksonville for 2.5 days (2 nights in a hotel). I ended up with 4 $400 vouchers. I told the gate agents my strategy (the CRC agents are amazing) and they loved it. They helped me to find the next booked flight and gave me the choice. I would come in each morning with my print out from the Sabre tool, tell her which flight to put me on and she would.

I think the trick is to not get too greedy and try and get on every flight. I would do one in the morning, one at night and I didn't raise too many red flags.

There is a difference between the next available flight (which is not what they are booking you on) and the next flight with availability (which is what they are booking you on.

Yes, you can get serial bumps, but those flights were still showing availability when they booked you. They will not normally book you on a flight that does not have availability (remembering that they oversell a considerable amount of seats).

I've been bumped and told that the next flight they could get me on was three or four flights later.

Actually they were booking on flights that had no availiblilty. Because the entire weekend was full, part of the agreement I made at the time of bumping was to name my next flight.

They were placing me on the waiting list of full flights with the hope that not enough people would show up. They placed me on flights that were oversold by 20 people or more.

Granted, my situation was unique as it was an incredibly oversold weekend and I was in Florida trying to get to the only major hub it was flying through (Atlanta).

Not always. I flew SFO-DFW a few months back on the last flight of the night and was bumped. They wanted to put me on the next flight out at 6.a.m, but I told them I'd rather go out on the midnight flight the next day, some 24 hours later, on the same itinerary. The gate rep rebooked me that way without any hassle.

One late night flight from ATL-VPS--where they were asking for volunteers-- I overheard a young couple coming to an agreement that they'd taken 5 bumps and as that had paid for their Destin vacation, they'd go ahead and depart on that flight rather than take yet another bump!

This was during the period when ASA was offering $200 in actual money for taking a bump, rather than vouchers or free flights. Talk about the good ole days!

Hi sgosline,


The MilesBuzz! forum is for posting of information related to the latest frequent flyer program buzz.

This doesn't appear to have anything to do with miles or points, so I'm moving over to TravelBuzz!.

Regards,
Flipside