Have you ever been bumped from a flight? Taken vouchers to involuntarily skip a leg of your journey through life? Told that you were removed from your flight to the Westminster Dog Show, forcing Bacon the Norwich Terrier to miss his best in breed event? Me either. We are the lucky 99.99%.
Some are not so lucky. According to Brett Snyder at CNN, 65,000 individuals were involuntarily bumped from flights in 2010 due to overbooking. That is a lot of angry people for sure, but actually only represents 1 in 10,000 air passengers. Regardless of the size of this small minority of travelers, the Department of Transportation heard their shrieks of anger and decided to significantly increase compensation awarded to “the bumped.” Being unlucky is about to get much more lucrative.With the old rules, an airline that delivered you to your destination within two hours of your original arrival time was obligated to refund the value of your one-way ticket up to $400. The new rule calls for double the value of your one-way ticket, for up to $650. For delays longer than two hours, the airline is now required to refund you four times the value of the original ticket, up to $1300. That amount is up from a maximum of $800 under the old rules.
So why do people get bumped in the first place? The majority of airlines sell more tickets to every flight than they have seats. They want their flights full, and since some people do not show up to fly, the airlines overbook to ride the line of maximum profitability.
Of course, an increase in fares will likely piggyback this increased compensation scheme. Since airlines must now account for these increased overbooking penalties in their profitability algorithm, they may sell less seats per flight. This could increase the price per seat marginally.
Who knows? Maybe you will make out like a bandit from this increase in bumping compensation. I would definitely not mind pocketing $1300 for arriving three or so hours late to my destination. What do you think?
flickr image via Andrew Morrell photography