jjmoore

It's another new year. Please post VDB experiences here for 2018.

Flying Machine

jjmoore

Yeah $6000 is quite the sexy offer... it never would have been that high if my Mrs. and I were on that flight.

Happy new year to you as well! Hopefully it will be a more active year on this thread.... I haven't scored one since Dr. Dao, and this is my longest stretch in my flying career without a VDB.

linglingfool

I will have to get more color when they get back on how many volunteers they were looking for. As it was, it was a family of 6 traveling together, so they didn't want to split.

chiasmatic

have to guess EWR will be VDB heaven tomorrow. With all segments of EWR-RDU canceled today and 2 morning flights canceled tomorrow, there's not a single seat available for sale tomorrow or Saturday.

jjmoore

I would bet money on there being so many no shows for a variety of reasons after an event like this that oversale will be few and far between even after all of the cancellations. Some of these reasons include last moment reservation cancellations due to trips in vain, those that drive instead, etc. etc. I've seen this a few times in Denver after big snowstorms.... one instance I remember in particular was a makeup leg from SFO to DEN in 2016 after the March blizzard... overbooked by 25 and ended up taking several standbys (B788 aircraft).

Keep us posted nonetheless if you are flying out of EWR tomorrow.

RockyBalboa

It’s been awhile for me to be on a flight where the agents were openly soliciting volunteers but it happened Saturday morning at PHL.

I was returning to IAH after two weeks back home for the holidays. The agent got on the mic and said they needed at least two people and were offering $1000. I hopped up and told her I’m willing to take that offer. I was in paid F and had two checked bags. Another agent called down to the ramp and had my bags off loaded and I filled out the voucher info.

I asked that I be put back in F and she said no problem - that I would have a seat on Sunday morning (and it showed immediately on my app). Or she said that she’d give me $1500 and put me on American in coach. I decided to stick with my original $1000 and departing Sunday. I texted my family and told them I’d be taking the train back home and moved off to the side to wait for them to finish boarding the plane. The agent said they now needed three or four seats and was still asking for volunteers.

After the final passenger boarded I walked back up and she said that they no longer needed my seat but she’d be willing to honor the change until tomorrow or any other day if I wanted to stay longer in PHL. I said no thanks that I was only doing this for the $1000 and she gave me my original boarding pass back and they radioed to have my bags reloaded. I was the last to board and kept my original seat.

That was a bummer. I have a IAH-LAS trip coming up and the fares in F are as high as I’ve ever seen (Super Bowl weekend). Outbound is $1633! Normally they’re in the $600-900 range for the round trip. So I was going to use that voucher for that. Oh well!

What is weird to me is why the large offer and the scramble for volunteers and we didn’t even have any on standby?

thejaredhuang

Did you ever have the chance to take the money and go or did they tell you to wait?

My last experience they offered $300 when I went up to the counter, GA said oversold by 4 and they ended up putting a few standbys on

RockyBalboa

Nope - she had me fill in my info and then pulled my bags and she handed me the terms and conditions printout for the voucher. I was just kind of standing there in the way then so I moved off to the side and waited thinking she’d give the voucher once she finished boarding the flight.

Glad I planned on taking the SEPTA train back home and not having my sister turn around to head back to the airport! She would’ve been waiting for me as I’d be sitting there for probably 20 minutes.

sexykitten7

So close!

Btw standby only affects oversales if there are must-ride employees like the Dao debacle. They will not bump to clear SBY pax. Thus, standby lists are not indicative of loads or bump chances (e.g. empty flights can have long lists and oversold flights can have no one).

thejaredhuang

I was stating that my "oversold" flight eventually accommodated standbys so either I had a lot of no shows or it wasn't really oversold. OLCI said it was oversold, GA said oversold by 4 so probably a bunch of no shows. I guess that's what happens on the 1st flight out on a Sunday morning.

jjmoore

That's usually the case... over by several, and missed connections / no shows balance things out. UA is just not allowing flights to overbook by as many seats as they did before April 2017.....

joe_miami

Thanks for nothing, Dr. Dao.

WillTravel

They were seeking volunteers at SJD (Cabo) on Friday afternoon (Jan. 5) for SJD-SFO. I (and my traveling companion) also had SFO-YVR. The agent got approval from his supervisor, and we were on the list as volunteers. ($500 voucher + hotel) But it turned out, that although at least 4 people had volunteered, none were needed, and I am fairly certain the flight went out with at least one empty seat.

zymm

So, I have a red-eye SFO-ORD tonight which prompted for volunteers at check-in. I'm connecting to a trip ORD-IAD-ZRH-BOM which is also booked with UA but on a separate PNR (I booked this before moving from ORD to SFO, cheaper to buy surrounding flight than pay change fee/fare difference) with about 4 hours in between. Looking at SFO-ORD flights for late tonight/early tomorrow, they all seem pretty full (F=0, Y = 5 or fewer). If they do end up needing volunteers for my flight, would they be willing/able to combine the PNRs and bump me to some routing that gets me to IAD? How desperate would they have to be to consider this? :P