Delta offering to buy your seat

McSween

Do Delta still offer individuals a night in a hotel and a rebooking for the next day? Or was that very seldom?

What are the chances of it happening transatlantic?

Fred Swanson

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athtrasna

Doesn't happen on transatlantic to Dublin very often. They tend to bump their own and partner frequent flyers to business class first.

InTheTrees

Its usually called getting "bumped" here in the usa. And all airlines do it, its pretty common. You'll be at the departure gate and they'll ask for volunteers.

It probably more common is the usa where its still a little less formal than in Europe. You can also ask to get on an earlier flight if you arrive at the airport too early.

InTheTrees

athtrasna wrote: »

Doesn't happen on transatlantic to Dublin very often. They tend to bump their own and partner frequent flyers to business class first.

Yup. I've been bumped into first class a couple of times on transatlantic flights.

athtrasna

InTheTrees wrote: »

Yup. I've been bumped into first class a couple of times on transatlantic flights.

Me too, and have taken the later flight plus compensation option many times internally in the US but having flown extensively on Delta transatlantic I've never heard them making the offer on Dublin-Atlanta/JFK or return.

I have done so with American from Chicago to London though.

InTheTrees

athtrasna wrote: »

Me too, and have taken the later flight plus compensation option many times internally in the US but having flown extensively on Delta transatlantic I've never heard them making the offer on Dublin-Atlanta/JFK or return.

I have done so with American from Chicago to London though.

I guess its more economical for them to put a transatlantic passenger into first class than giving them a free ticket. It shows how much they must be making on first class seat prices.

athtrasna

InTheTrees wrote: »

I guess its more economical for them to put a transatlantic passenger into first class than giving them a free ticket. It shows how much they must be making on first class seat prices.

On my American flight, got a double bump, economy to business and then to first. The first class ticket would have cost $6,000 :eek:

It's cheaper for the airlines to put frequent flyers into premium seats and fill the economy seat when oversold, than to bump an economy passenger and have to accommodate, compensate and re-book them.

coylemj

Saw them ask for volunteers to be bumped at the check-in desk in a US airport once. I wasn't interested as I had a connecting flight at the destination but I watched the process and was fascinated by how it worked. If I remember correctly, the passengers stood there rigidly as the airline clerk progressively upped the offer until eventually a few of them cracked and stepped forward but nobody budged on the first or second offers. Clearly the passengers were familiar with the process and I had heard about it though I had and still have never seen it happen here.

F35

athtrasna wrote: »

On my American flight, got a double bump, economy to business and then to first. The first class ticket would have cost $6,000 :eek:

It's cheaper for the airlines to put frequent flyers into premium seats and fill the economy seat when oversold, than to bump an economy passenger and have to accommodate, compensate and re-book them.

First class on a transatlantic, nice!!

Steak & BJ, right?

adamski8

F35 wrote: »

First class on a transatlantic, nice!!

Steak & BJ, right?

Mmmm beef jerky

McSween

i'm flying mco to jfk, then on to shannon. i arrive in jfk only an hour and a half before departure for snn. any delay from mco could put me in trouble. only thing about staying in a hotel is that the one aer lingus has us in before was over an hour away so you'd be too knackered to enjoy it

Stereomaniac

So what is MCO, just so I can understand your story a little bit better? I am not as well-travelled as you and have never set foot outside of this beautiful European community we have.

Fred Swanson

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dloob

Got bumped on a United flight from San Francisco to London once.
They put us up over night near the airport with free meals and flew us business class the next day, they also rescheduled our connecting flight from London to Dublin and gave us a few 100 dollars in flight vouchers which we never got around to using.
Not sure if overbooking would be as likely on a Dublin route though.

I've seen the auction on a flight from Chicago to Las Vegas where they wanted a volunteer off the flight after we had boarded, it was to fly later in the day business class with ever increasing compensation until someone cracked.

As it happens that Vegas flight was a day later than we planed as the Aer Lingus flight the previous night into Chicago was delayed by a lightening strike and we missed our connection.
It was around new years so we were lucky to get the flight the next day, initially Aer Lingus said the best they could offer was a flight in 4 or 5 days time, then my cousin showed up who works in O'Hare and knows some of the Aer Lingus staff and they managed to suddenly discover one the next morning.
We were put up in the Airport Hilton for the night.
When we arrived in Vegas the next day the hotel there claimed to have cancelled my booking as a no show despite me ringing them to make sure they wouldn't the day before but that's another story.

coylemj

This wasn't technically an upgrade but I was on a multi-leg flight once, say going from A to B to C. When we arrived at airport B, most of the passengers got off and it turned out that (purely by chance) there was no new passengers joining the flight so to speed things up, they decided not to bother cleaning the whole plane as it was late in the day. Now technically it was a new flight for anyone who might have joined us so normally the cabin would have gotten a full service but as there was no new passengers, they made a token effort to clean up the first few rows (i.e. they removed newspapers from the seats and debris from the seat pockets), then they asked the remaining passengers on board to move forward to those rows that had been 'cleaned'.

They then literally poured drink into us for the duration of the second leg, we were clearly being bribed not to look behind us and under no circumstances were we to complain that most of the plane was a pig sty. All of us understood the deal so we got quietly p1ssed and lapped up the free hospitality!