Delta Air Lines offers passengers $10k each to get off 'oversold' flight | Hacker News Reader

Delta Air Lines offers passengers $10k each to get off 'oversold' flight

usatoday.com

27 pointscwwc26 comments

A few things that seem a little off from the accounts:

1) A flight attendant wouldn’t be the one to make the announcement. It would be the gate agent.

2) The Apple Pay part of the announcement is really weird. Airlines typically don’t hand out cash directly and even if they could, this isn’t how Apple Pay works. The payment usually comes in the form of a check or a credit voucher printed at the gate.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Delta offered the amount to gain a little positive press but I don’t believe some of the extraneous details.

To be clear, Involuntary Denied Boarding compensation, the kind you’re given when no one takes the bump offer, is soft-capped at $1550 - https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...

Delta may have known there was no way they were going to get these passengers on other flights today and gave them more cash to try to make it a little easier to swallow.

I was on an oversold WestJet flight a few days ago and a $2400 voucher was announced to give up your seat. I was told the amount corresponded to the delay, and that it was "up to" $2400, with a flight leaving the same time the next day, which was the longest option mentioned being worth $1500. I didn't see any confirmation from someone receiving the $10,000 so I would guess it was the same situation.

From the article:

> “If you have Apple Pay, you’ll even have the money right now,” the flight attendant said, Aten wrote.

That does not clarify whether it's $10,000, or up to $10,000.

Back to the article we go:

> The crew was looking for eight volunteers to give up their seats on the "apparently oversold" flight, offering them $10,000 each.

I have emphasized the use of “up to” in the previous sentence.

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/870/

Doesn’t seem to be the case at all. The article is very clear about what was heard:

> The crew was looking for eight volunteers to give up their seats on the "apparently oversold" flight, offering them $10,000 each.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, none of which has been supplied. This particular statement about Apple Pay makes the story sound less likely, since it is not the typical way airlines handle this compensation.

This doesn't read as extraordinary at all, having been a pretty heavy frequent flier on Delta. The ops problems I've been reading about sound pretty hellacious.

I've gotten heavy cash credit in the past, printed as a check at the desk. The only difference here is apple pay, which delta started to heavily market about when I stopped flying so I didn't read that as totally out of the question.

The cash credit thing is quite a lot more common that Internet lore would have you believe. I've seen it hit multiple thousands or more dozens of times, although never $10k personally. Sample size of probably around 1500 flights.

It also seems like it’s atypical to offer $10K. Maybe the whole thing is an atypical situation and we should trust the article vs. our well-honed software engineer intuition?

Yes the $10,000 was the extraordinary claim. I assumed that was a given. The Apple Pay is just an extra head-scratcher.

Still not that much of a head-scratcher.

Look at the sentiment in the comments here. Nobody can believe that the airlines will give out $10k. There must be some catch or some loophole they’ll use to avoid paying the $10k.

Airline isn’t stupid and knows this so they have a method for near instant payment.

It's not so much that I can't believe Delta would offer $10,000 (although that is pretty hard to believe). What really seems extremely unlikely is that when they offered $2000 or $3000 or even $5000, enough passengers didn't jump at those offers.

Once they have you off the plane it is, in practice, totally up to them whether and how much and in what specie to pay you. This isn't true of general counterparties but airlines have so many legal "protections" they could muddy the water to the point you'd never come out ahead.

That's not to say taking the offer would be a bad idea; just because your expected value isn't nearly $10k doesn't mean it's 0 either.

I'd be curious what happened there or what route as I am surprised to hear this. I wonder what the circumstances were, e.g. trying to make room for crew in transit that was on a cancelled flight.

I fly reasonable amount and try to exclusively use WestJet in recent years because they don't ever overbook and I just want to get there without frustration. In the last ~15 years of adulting I've had Air Canada, Delta or United, Lufthansa vouchers, credit, or cash for volunteering/involuntary bump but have never seen this at a WestJet gate.

(I did have a cancelled WS flight a couple hours prior recently so here is to hoping to get my $1000 eventually.)

They said it was overbooked and needed two volunteers.

I was one offered a large sum and took it. It meant a 5 hour delay in Chicago but I passed the time rather pleasantly.

As far as you can remember. Your blood alcohol level was 0.15 by the time you boarded, according to the police report (joke! I don’t know PP).

Something tells me a gate agent does not have the authority to hand out $10k via Apple Pay.

As of April 13, 2021, the us dot indicates that passengers may not be involuntarily bumped once their boarding pass has been collected or scanned and the passenger has boarded.

if you took the 10k, you're a chump who probably passed up a seven sfigure settlement.

> if you took the 10k, you're a chump who probably passed up a seven sfigure settlement

Seems like a reach.

Has anyone to date received a 7-figure settlement for getting involuntarily bumped (except for maybe that dude the airline really roughed up)? And remember the person taking $10k had what maybe a 1 in 100 chance of being randomly selected for an involuntary bump?

You obviously don't understand game theory. You could only receive a "settlement" (and good luck even getting 6 figures), possibly, if you were involuntary bumped. Which is why airlines offer money -- so the removal is not involuntary. The people who got off got $10,000, the people who stayed on the flight and got nothing are the chumps.

You realize of course, that if you don’t voluntarily accept the 10k, you’ll get nothing unless 1) not enough other people accept the offer and 2) you get randomly selected to be involuntary bumped. You may want to rethink who would have ended up being the chump had you been on that flight.

You likely won't get $10k even if no one else happens to take the offer and you get bumped. 7 figures is a pipe dream fantasy.

These things are typically statutory fines that don't even go to you personally, but I have been out of flying for a number of years so info is dated. I'd be surprised if the amount wasn't exactly specified.

I'm surprised the airlines haven't seen this as an itemizable fee opportunity.

The cheapest tickets would come with an explicit "buying this class ticket constitutes an explicit agreement to being bumped according to such-and-such-rules if oversold" disclaimer, and then they can list "schedule protection" as a feature of more expensive fare classes.

I suspect if they could get away with it, they'd just put everyone's ticket price in a spreadsheet and start bumping from the bottom up.

They can't, it's DOT Federal Law requirement. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights

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