Why do people get bumped both voluntarily and involuntarily?

Which is bigger - compensation for voluntary bumping, or compensation for involuntary bumping?

If the compensation for voluntary bumping is smaller, why would any passenger volunteer for bump?

If the compensation for voluntary bumping is bigger, why would the airline offer it?

The compensation for an involuntary bump is higher.
As for why a passenger volunteer, it is because there's much less chance you'd be the one to be IDB'd (involuntarily denied boarding). Volunteering ensures that if anyone gets bumped, it's you.
Also, there are times that the airline will increase the amount of the compensation for a voluntary bump if they don't get any volunteers with their first/second/third offer, etc.

Interesting question...

The reason why airlines ask for volunteers is that they are required to do so by Department of Transportation regulations.

The DOT does not require that the airline offer any particular amount of compensation, or any compensation at all, to vollunteers but airlines typically do. The DOT DOES require specific compensation amounts in the event of an involluntary denied boarding and that compensation must be paid in cash or check. The amount of required compensation is based on the fare that you paid and the length of the delay that it causes in reaching your final destination. Caps are $200 or $400 depending on the circumstances.

What most airlines will do is offer volunteers a higher amount of compensation than what the DOT rules would require for an involluntary bump but the compensation will be in the form of a voucher or free ticket. The incentive to the airline is that it costs them much less than to face value of the voucher to provide the "free" transportation when the voucher is redeemed so they may end up spending only $20 in actual costs instead of paying $400 in cash to an IDB. The incentive to the vollunteer is that they get a higher face value which is worth it's full face value if the passenger was/is going to fly again anyway.

The DOT has a pamphlet called "Fly Rights" which covers this, as well as other travel rights issues, in detail. You can read Fly Rights at the following URL:

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/t...s/flyrghts.htm

Sometimes there are not enough voluneers who jump up for it, sometimes it's just easier to do an invol at the gate then ask for people, etc

I've seen it both ways, once I heard a gate agent announce "If we have to bump somebody, the deal won't be this good". Probably lying, but the compensation is all over the place

Because when I volunteer I know I'll get the compensation. If you don't, you don't guarantee it will be you that is picked. There are times they have been looking and I've had to be someplace and couldn't take it, but if I can or if I've planned flights for a bump potential, I'm the first one to ask.

It saves them face. Nobody is upset usually, the person who gets the compensation wanted it, they knew when they volunteered they would be on a different flight, in many times they are happy to take it.

If you need to force somebody not to fly, and they don't want to be bumped, it's not a pretty sight at times. I've seen the police called to gates to handle the situtation more then once.

It's also possible when they offer me a free ticket and some amount of cash that they are putting somebody in my seat who just bought a ticket and paid way more then they are giving me for all that, so they make a profit too.

So, the denied boarding compensation is capped at $400 plus involuntary refund for all fares above $200...

Suppose that you know long in advance you will really need to fly at a specific time, and buy the ticket at, say, $2000 because of advance purchase fare. If now before the flight anyone wishes to buy a ticket at walk-up fare, say, $2500, then the airline has every incentive to sell the ticket, overbook the flight, and involuntarily bump you. Right? As soon as the price difference between advance purchase ticket and walk-up fare exceeds the denied boarding compensation, you would be liable to find at the airport that all you get would be involuntary boarding compensation and involuntary refund.

Correct?

You need to remember that airlines also need to factor in future revenue from that pax and general reputation among time senstive customers (who tend to be your profitable ones). If I'm that pax they just bumped, my $2K might be going elsewhere forever. So they aim to get as much revenue as possible at the back. For some airlines, they could not sell 2 seats for $300 and sell one for $600, and they are ahead even with empty space at the back.

The chance of a genuine voluntary bump becoming truly p***ed off and abandoning your airline forever (possibly taking out other paxs via reputation hit) is much smaller than an involutary one. So a voluntary bump is less costly than an involuntary one all else being equal. But if volunteers don't materialize or are too costly, then you go to IDBs and live with the potential reputation hit

Keep in mind too that the $200 and $400 amounts are caps. The actual amount is based on the ticket price for that segment limited by the cap. So if the airline needs to IDB someone, it is cheapest for them to pick the person(s) with the lowest fares. It has been discussed before that some pax bumped on award tickets have been denied compensation because the airline considered the ticket free.

In my experience, I have not seen the airlines cherry pick the cheapest tickets to bump, but typically more along the lines of the last pax (based on checkin time) without seat assignments.

The airlines are also known to take advantage of pax not knowing their rights and giving them vouchers instead of the required cash.

We need mandatory bumping. I think 1 pax should be thrown off each flight - preferably the guy in the seat next to mine.

I've never been IDB, and I hope I never am. HOWEVER, I have a question in case it happens one day.

Most of my flights are for vacations, and usually involve a connection. Are they less likely to bump someone who has a connection to catch, do you think?

If I tell them missing the flight I am being IDB from (say, Orlando to Atlanta) would cause me to miss my connection to, say, London, are they obligated to get me to London, even if they are on separate tickets? Or am I SOL on an IDB?

If the flights are on separate tickets, you are on your own for the second flight. Depending on the airline, the gate agent may or may not have some leeway in determining who to IDB, telling them your situation can't hurt, but may or may not help.

In the situation where I was most closely involved in, there were 9 pax, including me, who did not have seat assignments. It was an Air Canada flight from MCO to Toronto, and the ground agents were United employees. The agent didn't seem to be in a very good mood to start with, and she made a very half hearted attempt to solicit volunteers, with none to be had. Two or three of the pax w/o seat assignments started getting beligerent/irate. One was traveling with what appeared to be his boss, and his boss was pitching a fit, and alternately to pay any fare to get that person on.

After the seat count, they had two open, and those seats were given to pax based on checkin time order. So the agent couldn't care less what anyone's story was, it appeared that the computer made the decision automatically, and I'm not sure the agent would have been able to override anyway. Luckily, I was one of the two, if I had gotten to the airport just a few minutes later, I would have been one of the IDBs. Generally, this is one reason to always OLCI, but AC did not offer this on international flights at the time.

For the denied boarding compensation. Not for the total costs of involuntary denied boarding. If the airline sells you a $ 10 000 ticket, say in F or R class, and then denies boarding, they do not get to return the cap of $ 400 and earn $ 9600 without ever flying you - they return $ 10 400 and thereby lose $ 400.
This applies for all fares. After all, if the airline has to choose between involuntarily denying boarding to a passenger with $ 2000 ticket and involuntarily denying boarding to a passenger with $ 2500 ticket, in first case they need $ 2400, in the second case $ 2900.

Of course, when the ticket price is below $200, the denied boarding compensation is limited to treble price (double as compensation plus once for involuntary refund), so obviously stranding a passenger with $50 ticket is very cheap.
Are people bumped on award tickets entitled to compensation over and above refund of the miles?

Are miles in compensation for involuntary denied boarding elite-qualifying miles?

It's worth pointing out that the $200/$400 limits on IDB are very old, and have never been adjusted in real terms.

So, it was historically very costly to bump pax ($400 was a lot more money back then), but it has gotten cheaper and cheaper.

The economics of bumping are a little interesting (at least to an economist). As I understand it (but this is all second-hand knowlege), back in the old days of airline regulation, ticket prices were more or less set by route, with relatively little variation. Airlines competed on quality, rather than price. (hard to believe, now adays).

They did price discriminate, by way of offering student, military, and senior fares.

And when flights were oversold (which I think was much more common back then, because without the $100 change penalties people would make a reservation for the Tuesday and Wednesday flight, if they weren't sure which one they would take), the airlines tended to bump students and military.

So an economist says "Hey, this is inefficient. What if a student really needs to get to a job interview... we should be bumping the people who have the most flexible schedules."

Of course, you aren't going to get many volunteers if you kindly ask "anyone willing to wait three hours for the next flight," so an economist proposed a (reverse) auction: start by offering $100, then raise it to $200, etc., until you have enough volunteers. (To keep people from holding out, i think they tend to award everyone the maximum price...and its often not really an auction, but many of you muts have seem airlines up the rewards when volunteers were scarce).

So Milton Friedman, the great free-market economist, heard this proposal, and said "No, this can't possibly be a good idea--if it were efficient, the airlines would have done it already. And they are not doing."

But the airlines adopted iit, and Friedman later recanted his first statement.

(note: I believe the above is true, but i may have some facts/etc. wrong, so don't put this into your honor's thesis without checking the facts).

Isn't also true that IDB has to be paid in cash, while VDB can be a travel voucher???

But the cap as a fixed sum of money means that it is relatively cheap to bump passengers on routes with high fares.

A further advantage to the airline of the voucher/free ticket is that not all of them get redeemed. A small number are forgotten about or the passenger ends up not wanting to travel again, a larger number find that when they come to try to use the voucher they are told "no space available". Airline reservation systems long moved ago away from just seat availability to determining who you are before allowing a reservation. There are many accounts by those who find vouchers or miles to be completely unusable, even though flights are going out with empty seats.

One day the US DOT will wake up to this one and require that VDB/IDB vouchers are able to be used on any service with available seating at time of reservation, not just sticking them against unusable fare classes.