Get Bumped from Your Flight and Earn
Airlines have this nasty habit of overbooking their flights. In order to make sure that no seat is wasted, they overbook as a back-up plan should any of the passengers do not show up. BUT if and when everyone shows up and there are not enough seats to accommodate all of the passengers, the airlines look for volunteers to give up their seats and take a later flight. If there are not enough volunteers, they are left with no choice but to pick out some passengers’ name and involuntarily bump them.
If you will anyway be crashing over at your sister’s boyfriend’s fratmate’s cousins flat in, say, Paris then that means you do not have to worry about hotel cancellation fees.
Bumped passengers are, of course, compensated. In the US, they are currently in the process of revising the bumping rules.
We are luckier on this side of the world. The European Union’s compensation rules for flights departing from EU countries is very clear:
- 250 euros for flights up to 1,500km
- 400 euros for flights from 1,500 to 3,500km
- 600 euros for all other flights
- in addition, passengers get a choice between reimbursement of their ticket and an alternative flight
- meals, refreshments and hotel accommodations, when needed
So… you can go right ahead and volunteer. If you get bumped, you can definitely cross that “diet and save by missing a meal each day” on your list.
Tags: airline, budget-travel, bump-flight, fly-and-earn, passenger-rightsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Travel Trivia
2 opinions for Get Bumped from Your Flight and Earn
Lynn
Jul 13, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I wouldn’t mind volunteering, but it seems that everytime this has happened to one of my flights, I was on a tight schedule to get somewhere, so I couldn’t! Darn!
Melissa Atienza-Petri
Jul 16, 2007 at 2:58 pm
same here!!!
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