Schweden

What's the biggest or best overbooked oversold volunteer offer that you've received or seen?

Personally, I wasn't feeling the best and volunteered for an oversold TXL-EWR flight by United 8 years ago. They took me up just to say they didn't need me anymore. Cleared customs, boarded flight, and they come in asking for me to volunteer again. Received a $400 travel credit that I was able to use, an overnight hotel, F&B certificates, and rebooked on Lufthansa TXL-MUC-YYZ. Pleasantly surprised the next day when I was upgraded at the gate at MUC to J on MUC-YYZ with no elite status.

YVR Cockroach

Time value of money. 1995 or '96. AA MIA-GRU. $1,000 voucher (worth, using US CPI, ~$1,700 today) + meals + hotel in MIA (connecting from RNO/DFW) and at GRU because I missed my connection to ASU the next day.

Duke787

Flying home from AUS a few years ago with my wife and DL was oversold by 1.

We split the reservation and I stayed and they gave me $1000 and a hotel. Next day the AUS - RDU was oversold so snagged another $500 to swap to a connecting flight.

So got home 24 hours later and $1500 total. Paid for our flights to BRU that Christmas plus some extra for a beach trip

SEA-Flyer

In terms of value received for inconvenience $600 each for my wife and I from UA in October 2001. Original routing was SEA-LAX-NRT-SIN, rerouted to SEA-NRT-SIN. Arrived in SIN on the same flight as originally scheduled, just skipping the oversold SEA-LAX. Got mileage credited for original routing.

Basically got $600 each for the inconvenience of having to sit in the lounge for a couple hours. 😀

Ryan_

LAS - SFO - ZRH on United in business in September 2021. $400 travel credit to depart 1.5 hours earlier from LAS. Original flight left at about 11am, new flight left at about 9:30am.

TravelerMSY

Do we get to count the retail value of the rebooked seat? $500 in NW credit plus a $1500 J seat msy ams, originally oversold in Y, for a next day flight.

DELee

FWIW, a few threads from UA Forum on some doozy VDBs (and a head nod to jjmoore who's kept UA FT flyers focused on the opportunity):

Here's one for $10K: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30574291-post514.html

Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump Experiences on UA [2022]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump Experiences on UA [2020-2021]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump Experiences on UA [2019]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump Experiences on UA [2018]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump on UA [2017]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump on UA [2016]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump on UA [2015]
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump on UA 2014
Voluntary Denied Boarding - VDB/Bump on UA 2013

David

wrp96

Two weeks ago, AA FLL-CLT, they started the volunteer offers at $1,200 and went up from there. Unfortunately traveling with my mother and couldn't take it. Several years ago, at FLL, I volunteered for one flight, and because I was nice to the gate agents, they put me on the list for all the later flights that day (I couldn't get home that day anyways) and gave me the vouchers for all those flights too. The same thing the next day. By the time I finally flew home, I had a few thousand dollars of vouchers to use.

Schweden

Looks like I should've asked UA for just a very reasonable 50% of that

Annalisa12

Money for nothing!

ATOBTTR

Two best bumps I did were within a few weeks of each other on DL.
First was on SFO-LAX-PHX. SFO-LAX was oversold. The offer was $800 but was told I would have to overnight at LAX. I asked if I could be rerouted on an SFO-ATL-PHX option that got me into PHX that evening. The extra MQMs from flying across the country and back was a nice boost too.
A few weeks later, I was flying via ATL, connecting onward to MGM and ATL-MGM was oversold by a lot. I knew I could get a rental car and drive to Montgomery so happily took the $1300 bump offer there. $2100 in bump vouchers in less than 1 month.

Other good bumps:
-Took a $700 bump on LAX-SEA to take a flight that was 1.5 hours later (DL).
-Was flying one-way DAY-ORD-STL on AA. DAY-ORD was oversold. Offer was $400 but no other options to STL that evening out of DAY on AA or any other airlines. Normally I wouldn't have asked for this option but this was a one-way flight to STL and I was going to be coming back by way of Cincinnati with family from STL anyway so I asked if I could be rebooked to a CVG-STL nonstop on DL that evening, which AA obliged to. As I left STL that evening, I saw my original ORD-STL flight coming in to land.
-On the trip where I used the $400 bump voucher, I was offered $500 for taking a flight about 5 hours later out of DFW. Allowed me to watch an NFL playoff game versus missing it while in the air. That $500 voucher eventually went towards my honeymoon flights.
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Bluehen1

I’ve gotten $1000 twice from United. Once one EWR-PVG and the other on EWR-IAH. Lots of $200 & $400 VDBs in my flying time as well.

MSPeconomist

Be careful Some airlines have been known to rebook customers from a connection to a nonstop and refuse compensation since the person arrives at the destination earlier, so regulations don't require anything. The contract is for travel from origin to destination and not for some particular route. You *might* be able to get ORC or to refuse to switch carriers, including mainline to RJ, etc.

SEA-Flyer

Fortunately didn’t happen to us. UA was pretty good at treating you right back in that era. This was in October 2001, when airlines had great difficulty in predicting passenger loads. Our SEA-LAX was oversold by 50 😮. They weren’t excited about having to reroute us and causing potential problems on downstream flights. But we had already done our homework and knew that they could book us on the SEA-NRT leaving several hours later that was less than 50% full - we let them know that we’d already checked. At that point they were thrilled to have us volunteer, and asked that we just hangout while they processed the other volunteers and rebooked the other folks who had more challenging and/or time sensitive itineraries.

In addition to the bump vouchers, because of the various post-9/11 mileage promos and our status bonuses, in conjunction with the original routing credits, we ended up getting over 5x miles on the trip, which by itself was good enough for us each to get a free round trip first class ticket to Europe.

ATOBTTR

This still goes down as an IDB against the airline if they do this, which is why they still seek volunteers and will pay them for the VDB, even if they could otherwise route someone more "efficiently." The IDB process also has to follow the airline's procedures for IDB. Sure an agent could call up a passenger with an SEA-DTW-JFK itinerary and ask them "I see you're booked with a connection to JFK and I can rebook you to a nonstop" and get the passenger to essentially accept/volunteer to the swap if the passenger will accept, but I don't think the agent can just look at the various reservations in the system and go "Oh this passenger is booked SEA-DTW-JFK and I can rebook them on SEA-JFK" without following specified IDB procedures.