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It could be a scene from an auction house: A Delta flight from Boston to Rome in September was so overbooked<\/a> that a flight attendant pleaded with passengers and offered them thousands of dollars and a hotel room to give up their seats in exchange for a voucher and a later flight.<\/p>\n \u201cCome on guys, $3,500, can somebody take one for the team?\u201d the flight attendant said in a video captured on TikTok. \u201cWe\u2019ll get you a hotel if you guys show up for us.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the account that posted the video, 13 passengers received between $2,000 and $4,000 to voluntarily surrender their tickets and end up in Rome on a later flight hours later.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just a lucky few who get to take advantage of the airline\u2019s overbooked flight vouchers. From January to March 2024, 23,699 Delta passengers have volunteered to \u201ctake one for the team\u201d in exchange for vouchers and travel perks. A common practice to ensure full flights, airlines often overbook passengers at the risk of shuffling them around and managing inconveniences. Per rules from the Department of Transportation<\/a> (DOT), airlines must compensate passengers 200% of the one-way ticket cost for a flight delayed up to two hours, and 400% for a flight delayed more than that\u2014a sum that can amount to up to $1,550. Airlines must give passengers compensation on the same day as the bumping incident.<\/p>\n But amid post-pandemic revenge travel<\/a> and labor shortages that have delayed and canceled record numbers of flights, airlines have been willing to shell out more perks to bump travelers from oversold flights, anything from pizza slices<\/a> for delayed passengers to $10,000 in cash<\/a>. As the airline industry notches record travel days<\/a> in the heat of July, airline passengers are clamoring for good deals\u2014and the secret is out on how airlines will dish them.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job as a content creator is to share hacks that people really like,\u201d full-time finance content creator Sam Jarman told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI need to listen to my audience and my audience loves anything related to flight, tips, hacks.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting booted from flights was a boon to Jarman in his years before having kids. Getting paid to wait a couple hours was a no-brainer for him, and he believes the next generation of Gen Z and millennial travelers\u2014who are seeking experiences over luxury goods<\/a>\u2014are good candidates for taking advantage of the travel perks that booking an oversold flight can offer.<\/p>\n \u201cGetting a flight voucher is almost like getting cash compensation, in my mind,\u201d Jarman said.<\/p>\n Getting bumped off a flight wasn\u2019t always considered an airline perk. Before social media became an accepted educational tool for financial literacy, it was a means of documenting airline nightmares. In 2017, a United Airlines<\/a> passenger was dragged off an overbooked flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. Multiple passengers captured the scene of a security officer grappling the passenger\u2014who had a tangled shirt and askew glasses as he was dragged down the plane aisle\u2014on cellphone cameras and posted videos on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like something the world needed to see,\u201d Tyler Bridges, one of the passengers who documented the scene on camera, told the New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n When airlines can\u2019t sweeten the pot enough with vouchers and perks to lure passengers off overbooked flights voluntarily, they rarely<\/a> have to resort to booting passengers off full flights involuntarily, a move that was even more controversial for this particular flight because United was looking for extra seats for its employees, Bridges said. United spokesperson Charlie Hobart responded at the time that the airline had asked the passenger several times to politely leave the plane, but he refused.<\/p>\n The incident was a turning point for not just United\u2014which apologized for the \u201cupsetting event\u201d and for overbooking the flight\u2014but the whole industry, according to Clint Henderson, managing editor of travel blog and news outlet The Points Guy<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe airlines dramatically escalated the amount they were willing to pay passengers to volunteer to take a later flight,\u201d Henderson told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cYou sort of had this arms race because the airlines didn\u2019t want to get in a situation where they had to force people off the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, airlines made near-immediate changes<\/a>, with Delta increasing their compensation for overbooked flights to up to almost $10,000. American Airlines<\/a> updated its Condition of Carriage<\/a> to prohibit the airline from removing a paying passenger who has already boarded an oversold flight. United implemented a policy requiring flight crew to check in an hour before flights to avoid having to displace passengers in events of oversold flights.<\/p>\n Even the DOT intervened, bolstering its denied boarding compensation rule in 2021 to prohibit airlines from denying boarding to a passenger or involuntarily bumping them if they checked into a flight before the check-in deadline, as well as clarifying that its listed requirements for financial compensation are a minimum, not a maximum.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result of the changes, United \u201csubstantially lowered the number of yearly [involuntary denied boardings] since 2017,\u201d Hobart told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n United\u2019s 2017 incident may be a distant memory for the aviation industry that\u2019s continued to weather controversy<\/a>, but how airlines navigate compensation for overbooked flights is a microcosm of the often tenuous relationship between passengers and industry giants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always been a push and pull between airlines and consumers,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cI think this is a continuation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Between shrinking seat sizes<\/a> and spoiled food<\/a>, commercial flights have lost their luster in the eyes of travelers. While airlines try to sweeten the pot for travelers with more generous vouchers and perks like ritzy lounges<\/a> with massages and steak tartare, resentful customers will still do what they can to get a leg up on airlines they feel are ripping them off, Henderson argued. It\u2019s an understandable sentiment from passengers, but it\u2019s also not good news for the industry as whole.<\/p>\n \u201cThe airlines are not always the good guys, so I don\u2019t want to make it sound like that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at the same time, it\u2019s not the most profitable business in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite record travel numbers, airlines have yet to see more travelers translate to more profit. Boeing<\/a> aircraft delivery delays, inflation, labor shortages, and poor expansion strategies have all dented<\/a> the industry\u2019s bottom line. The bleak outlook of the industry has Henderson concerned about TikTok trends and sharing hacks that may lead too many travelers to take advantage of overbooking rules.<\/p>\n But airlines haven\u2019t found that problem. The number of passengers denied boarding because of oversold flights has actually decreased, with 0.27 passengers per 10,000 from January to March being denied boarding because of an overbooked flight on the 10 largest commercial U.S. airlines. That\u2019s compared to 0.29 passengers per 10,000 in the same period in 2023 and 0.32 passengers per 10,000 in 2022, according to the DOT\u2019s Air Travel Consumer Reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Moreover, the number of bumped passengers doesn\u2019t fluctuate based on consumer demand or passengers hoping to cash in by intentionally booking an oversold flight. The amount of tickets an airline offers for an overbooked flight is based on its own predictions of how many people may no-show for a flight\u2014and its own need to turn a profit.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Henderson believes compensation for overbooked flights, regardless of their frequency, is just another way for airline passengers to try to tip the scales of airline economics in their favor, especially when they\u2019re feeling short-changed by the industry giants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s getting harder to maximize your battle against the airline,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nAirlines are booked, busy, and bruised<\/strong><\/h2>\n
First-class reputations<\/strong><\/h2>\n