Free airline tickets! The art of getting bumped

When I'm in the airport waiting to board my plane, I always sit near the gate so that if the flight is overbooked I can volunteer to be bumped--for a price, of course. The regular going rate these days to bump a passenger is to offer up a free ticket to wherever the particular airline flies (usually within the contiguous United States if you happen to be in the USA).

Catching such a deal is usually just the luck of the draw. There is, however, a way to hedge your bet if you want to snag a free ticket: BumpTracker.com catalogs flights that were overbooked and details how many people were bumped and what compensation they received. The site is organized by airline but that's the extent of it. It's up to you to scour the flights to see if a pattern exists of which you might be able to take advantage. I noticed, for example, that flights from Reagan National Airport to Miami on United were consistently overbooked and volunteers bumped were given $300 in airline vouchers.

This, however, doesn't do me any good unless I happen to live in Washington DC. The site needs to organize their search across all airlines based upon your airport of choice. Then I could search for the flights most likely to bump passengers and book one myself hoping to get bumped. That's called hedging your bet, folks.

And if this all seems like too much work, be sure to check out Grant's wonderful Guide to Getting Bumped which ran last week on Gadling. Grant gives the lowdown on everything you wanted to know about getting bumped and how to make the very best of the situation. I thought I was pretty cool with the above tricks, but Grant blows me out of the water.

Filed under: Airlines, Airports