This is a well written article based on the experience my wife and I have had. We have "bumped" or volunteered over twenty times. All of our experiences have been good ones. One year we flew to Hawaii three times for a cost of one ticket and we've had numerous trips to Florida and Arizona on these "free flights."

Our approach hasn't been to go to so much effort. We're not bent on beating the system so if it doesn't happen we're fine with that. We've discovered that certain airports and at certain times of the day, and I suppose certain routes also....it is almost guaranteed that they will ask for volunteers. So when we plan our trips we plan with with this in mind and schedule our flights accordingly.

Yes, we get to the agent before the volunteer announcement. How many times when the call for volunteers went out that my wife and I would give each other that knowing glance and rejoice in another "success." This has been going on for years and now we travel less but our little airport/schedule nitch still exists and still works. In a way I'm a little sad to see this being published because that usually means that it comes to an end.


I'll share this before I close. We had one experience when the airline company announced for volunteers offering a free flight. I volunteered both our tickets. There wasn't sufficient response so there was another call offering two free flights, and then a half hour later, a third call with three flights offered. We got the three flights. To top it off, within 30 minutes, they put us on another airline's flight to the same location and we landed 20 minutes ahead of our original flight!

Go figure. Sometimes God's grace is extended to these small things.

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