BUMP program success
 

Today I was e-ticketed to fly MCI - ORD - LGA. Due to big storms in Chicago, my MCI-ORD was significantly delayed. I walked over to the NW counter and asked about the BUMP program, and the agent told me that they had room if I could get a paper ticket (but AA was doing something to make accessing the E-Tickets difficult). I went to AA, asked for and received paper tickets, and NW put (and upgraded) me on MCI-DTW-LGA. All in all I will get to LGA before my original AA itinerary and avoid the zoo that ORD must be on a day like this. Nice for it to work after many posts from others noting that many agents don't know about the program.

Great story. I always enjoy reading about BUMP program success stories. ^

Airlines are not allowing other airlines release of their ETKTs now--giving the issuing and operating airline great control. This was probably the reason why NW couldn't pull up the AA ETKT and a paper ticket was necessary for the bump program to work.

Still, a great program. Might I ask, did the miles end up posting with the mileage/EQM bonus?

Did you have to pay to get paper tickets? I can see AA (or anyone) holding you "hostage", having to make the decision of waiting, or paying a paper-ticket fee to fly another airline. Hopefully they comped you the fee, to make you happy... funny how flying another airline/alliance might make you more loyal to AA (theoretically).

BTW, does anyone have the BUMP rules, that the GA would pull up on their computer screen? A cut-and-paste would be cool, for carrying around. Thanks!

Steve B.

I flew these flights yesterday, so I should know tomorrow whether I get mileage credit (I was careful to save the BPs since these might be tricky postings). American printed me tickets without any fuss, but that might have been because of the weather delay and my plat status with AA. The NW ticket person said that someone else, also weather-delayed, tried to get AA to print their tickets but was refused (although I think you can force the issue if you pay the paper ticket fee? Don't know). In any event what could have been a disaster for me at stormy ORD was averted.

I have done the BUMP a few times in recent years, sometimes sucessfully, sometimes not. The problem has never been with NW (assuming space is available) but with the carrier your ticket was on. They have to release the e-ticket and print you a paper one. I have gotten this for free once, DL tried to charge me $50 one time and I turned them down (it would only have saved an hour, and they were all CJs anyway), and another carrier just wouldn't do it all all (AA?). It seems you are way better off if you have status with the original ticketing carrier or some compelling reason to want them to do you the favor of releasing the ticket and printing the paper one.

So this can theoretically be done for any reason (at least from the NW point of view) so long as seats are available? My family is coming back from HNL 2 on awards on NW (HNL-MSP-MKE) and 1 on AA (HNL-DFW-MKE), but the AA schedule stinks and gets in to MKE 2 hours later (even thru ORD only saves 40 mins). The AA flight looks nearly full so presumably they'd want to get rid of someone, and the NW flight at least shows nearly all the premium seats open. What would the odds be of this working on 6/8? Does the fact that the AA ticket is award? I will of course keep checking to see if awards open up on NW as we get closer, but other than this we're stuck with the bad schedules (they originally coordinated perfectly back in Aug when we booked, but both airlines' sched changes didn't work together...).

Keep in mind the seat map is a bad indicator of availability. Especially since there could be a lot of non-elite pax that just can't book P seats. Look up the availability with the KVS tool or flyaow.

Thanks...I know the seatmap is bad, but never knew how to find out any other way.
Thanks!

Do any other airlines do this?

The fact that the AA ticket is award will make NW reluctant to take you. That's because they can turn in your AA ticket for the actual fare when it's a revenue ticket, but NW would get nothing if it's an AA award ticket.

Separately, the flights posted to my NW account 2 days after, but with the dreaded Q. Now that it's been a week, I'll call the plat line and try to clear it up (I kept the BPs, and I know the original AA ticket number, so hopefully that will suffice).

Agreed. NW will refuse the AA award since it's a no revenue ticket to them.

Similarly, tickets booked through most LCCs will not be accepted as part of the BUMP program.

Well, after a few days in Q-land, my miles posted. And they posted "well"...

Just wanted to post a BUMP program success story, this one from BNA.

My wife and I were scheduled to fly BNA-ORD-DFW on UA on Friday evening. Normally I try to stick to SkyTeam carriers, but we were able to find a decent fare from BNA to DFW and back on UA, so we went for it.

Weather was causing a delay on the inbound equipment that would be used for the BNA-ORD portion of our itinerary. I walked over to the NW counter and asked the agent if she knew about the BUMP program and explained my situation. She instantly knew what I was talking about. She checked to see if there was space available on BNA-MEM-DFW and asked me to go back to the UA counter to get a paper ticket.

The line at UA had been long and slow (my wife stayed in it; she didn't move at all during the time I was over at the NW counter). Got to the front of the line and asked for a paper ticket. The UA folks were pretty helpful because the delay was looking very bad. They actually ended up calling over to the NW counter and rebooking me electronically. So in reality, I didn't have to completely take advantage of the BUMP program.

But it definitely was an available option. And it was exciting to me that the NW agent knew about the BUMP program, because the few times that I have asked about it in the past, I have often been greeted with blank stares.

As outstations are outsourced, I expect this to become hard to take advantage of. Maybe even problems in the hubs, as the program gets older.

Steve B.