When flights are oversold, airlines have tools at their disposal to incentivize volunteers to step forward and take alternate flights. In the case of one Delta Air Lines flight, those willing to give up their seat were reportedly offered a $10,000 Visa gift card. That’s quite a haul for a regional flight!
Report: $10,000 Offer To Give Up Seat On Oversold Delta Air Lines Flight
Our friends over at Eye of the Flyer report that multiple passengers were offered $10,000 each on oversold Delta flight 3550 operated by SkyWest from Grand Rapids, Michigan (GRR) to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to take a later flight.
A reader left the following comment:
“Today is June 27th, 2022. I just flew from Grand Rapids, MI to Minneapolis. Delta offered $10,000 to anyone willing to give up their seat. Actually, they said they needed more than one person willing to bump. There was no mad dash among the passengers, but several people did indeed get off the plane and receive $10,000 via a Visa gift card. I was and am still stunned. Just sorry I couldn’t do it, as I was flying with my Wife who is legally blind and has to have me nearby.”
$10,000 to take a later flight? It’s not unheard of…we’ve reported a similar story on United Airlines. But that was in the form of travel credit, not a gift card that can be used as cash.
> Read More: $10,000 Voucher For United Airlines Bump!
Then another passenger on the flight corroborated the story on Twitter:
On @Delta flight from GRR to MSP and they just offered $10,000 for people to give up their seats.…
Ten. Thousand. Dollars.
— Jason Aten (@JasonAten) June 27, 2022
I have a feeling that the volunteers were eventually not needed, something I see all the time (based upon the follow-up tweet from Jason Aten):
Yes, all six of us are still on the flight I don’t want to talk about it.
— Jason Aten (@JasonAten) June 27, 2022
What typically happens is that a flight is oversold and so gate agents solicit volunteers in advance so that the flight can depart on time. However, compensation is usually not processed until after the flight departs, in case there are no-shows. A flight may be oversold and checked-in full, but if passengers get stuck at the security checkpoint or lose track of time at the airport bar, seats suddenly open up and volunteers are no longer needed.
On more than one occasion, I have given up my seat and been told to wait for my voucher only to be told just moments before the aircraft door closed that there was a no-show and my seat was no longer needed.
It is not clear what happened here, but it is clear that Delta was offering $10,000 to take a later regional flight. That’s incredibly generous and shows Delta’s ruthless commitment to avoiding involuntary denied boarding situations.
CONCLUSION
$10,000 to take a later flight. I’m sorry to say my time is not worth that much and I’d gladly take Delta up on that offer virtually anytime and anywhere.
Were you on that flight? Did Delta start gradually or did the offer begin immediately at $10,000?
image: Delta
I have not volunteered because I had to go to work on a Monday and the job was a dictatorship. However, one colleague had the nerve to accept the voucher but did not get fired.
As a leisure traveler, I always sign up when the offer is worth my time. Which I base on if I’m able to get on the next flight or have to stay overnight but $500 is usually my minimum number. But as stated, they usually don’t need the seat so I wasted my time waiting instead of boarding.
Visa doesn’t issue gift cards over $1000, so I’m suspicious of the story.
Interesting point. Are you sure about this?
Yes, $1k is the max for standard Visa gift cards. Visa’s reloadable prepaid cards can go higher, but I’ve never seen Delta issue those before. It was most likely a $10k voucher, or perhaps the story was completely made up.
They give you a voucher you can cash out in $250 gift card increments.
I don’t think that’s true. When I started a new job my relocation lump sum was sent to me as a prepaid gift card with far more than $1000 on it.
Perhaps consumer gift cards from the grocery store don’t go that high but corporate payroll departments can definitely get them in larger amounts.
They don’t issue greater than $1k gift cards but the way the bump works is you get credited the agreed amount of the bump on a 3rd party site and you can divide that amount over different offers that are available. Like delta gift cards, prepaid visa or Mastercard, target gift cards, etc. You may pick multiple of the same type of card, so in my case it was a $1500 bump so I selected a $1k visa gift card and a $500 gift card. Delta takes your info at the gate and verifies that you have received the email with the 3rd party site link before you walk away.
I fly Delta at least twice a week. Every single flight is either completely full or sold out. I’ve see offers up to $3,000 for people to take a later flight. It is crazy out there. Flights that used to cost less than $200 are now way above $800. As a Diamond medallion, I used to be upgraded all the time. Now, I am getting middle seats in coach and my name is usually #30 in the upgrade list. Last, Delta lounges are ridiculously overcrowded. Last week in Minneapolis there was a line of over 50 people outside the lounge waiting for people to come out so another one could go inside. Totally nuts!!!
Yikes.
AA isn’t any different. The demand is high and they have scheduling down to formula that allows maximum profitability of flights. Even with fuel costs I expect the airlines to report near record profits next quarter to the shock of analysts. There are no cheap flights before fall available.
I never miss an upgrade on AA. Even in an irrops situation today, I booked straight in to F on my first new flight, and cleared my upgrade hours before boarding my connection. If I don’t clear in advance, I’m usually #1 or 2 on the UG list and those usually clear at T-40. @Santastico’s issue with regularly being #30 on DL couldn’t be farther from my reality at AA. I do think being based out of the new AUS hub is probably what is making my experience so much better than everyone else’s, but I don’t face problems at DFW either.
I fly Delta at least once a month and am Platinum. I have been having better luck than you…3 of 4 flights in general I am upgraded, except the long transcon tend to be more difficult, though last month was upgraded to Delta One. I don’t use Skyclub but can attest the constant lines I have been seeing in ATL& SFO. I had much better luck upgrading in Air Canada recently to GRU – all four legs.
@MikeS: where are you based? I am based in a major Delta hun (MSP) and it looks like everyone here is a Diamond. Delta was nice enough to roll out MQMs for 2 years in a row because of the pandemic but that generated a ridiculous number of Diamond members that all compete for upgrades. I often fly from here to Denver, Chicago or Orange County and I am lucky if I don’t get a middle seat in coach. Delta Comfort is a huge maybe and first class almost impossible.
I thought your “friend” in Chicago told you not to come there due to violence and street wars raging across the city? Yet now you fly there mostly?
I use a bullet proof vest when I go to Chicago and never leave my hotel after dark. It seems to work fine for now. Also, I don’t go there very often but happened to be there 3 times in the last two months.
The upgrade algorithm was supposed to be changed to give elites who legitimately re-qualified for status during the pandemic a higher priority for upgrades. In practice, I’m not seeing it at all.
Worse yet, some gate agents continue to not process upgrade lists. I’ve had several flights depart with empty seats and plenty of customers on the upgrade list.
Even in all-time-record-breaking 2019, I was never below number two on the upgrade list as a Diamond Medallion and Million Miler. Since March, I’m regularly number 5 or 6 of 45-50 on the upgrade list. I can’t prove it but I hear that non-elites are getting cheap buy-up offers on the app and the website. Delta thinks these customers are more likely to buy a premium seat than the elites.
If I combine the first-class upgrade and comfort-plus upgrade lists on my mainline flights, around 55-60% of the average mainline flight has some level of status to end up on an upgrade list. That is just crazy.
@FTN Delta Diamond: All I can say is that the crowd sitting on first class are not the business crowd anymore. Families with kids, old people clearly on vacation, people wearing shorts, etc…. I doubt they are all Diamonds. They either get an option to upgrade for cheap or are buying first class tickets. I will requalify for Diamond this year without the need of any rollover MQMs and I was probably upgraded once in dozens of flights I took this year. What really called my attention is that I am never the first to be upgraded but #30 sometimes. How is that possible when I pay $700 to fly from MSP to DEN? To make things worse, not even Delta Comfort I am getting. Last couple flights I sat in a middle seat. Something is really wrong with their system.
PVD, but almost always fly out of BOS and invariably a stop in either LGA, JFK or ATL when heading to DEN or SFO.
Just had Delta delay a flight for 4.5 hours so that we could get the last flight attendant out if bed in Minneapolis and down to Chicago for a flight to Seattle. All the entire flight was offered for that delay was a $30 food voucher, and that only after every single food outlet had closed for the night. I doubt this happened, Delta typically does not extend themselves for customer inconvenience.
I wonder if there’s an expiration date on the gift card/travel voucher.
Friend and I got bumped from NYC to Dallas flight. They offered $600, then gave us $700 each and paid for transportation, hotel and meals in NYC. We made the best of it. Went to Scarr’s pizza for dinner, and Katz’s for pastrami reubens for lunch the next day.
Nice. Was the $700 a voucher or a cash-like gift card?
I am really doubting this whole story. There is no way, even on a regional jet, that you can’t find a few people at $1K willing to spend the night or take a later flight that day. I have bid on UA a few times and threw in $1K on a very oversold flight and, of course, it never happened. I mean, even at $2K how could you not find people?
I might question it too. It fails the sanity check two ways.
One, would any airline ever give five figures as compensation for bumping? I don’t have numbers to back this up, but I would think a few of those would approach the cost of running a flight on one of those toy planes from Grand Rapids to MSP.
I’ve never given up a seat (or been bumped) but the most I ever remember being offered free tickets and travel vouchers and such in the mid three figure range.
Second, if they did offer 10 kilobucks, people would most certainly JUMP at the chance! I sure would, and I have sworn to never ever ever give up my seat.
Supposedly, Delta has confirmed that $80,000 was given out.
It sounds like this was actually INVOLUNTARY DENIED BOARDING because nobody would give up their seats.
I’m pretty sure three people were IDB’d on my flight this morning, DFW-AUS. It had something to do with no room for baggage in the overhead, but they were seated, then removed prior to departure. It wasn’t behavior related. We were on an E70, so I ‘think’ even in a weight and balance scenario, which this like
was, it would still count as a legit IDB, since the aircraft can carry more than 60 pax. They didn’t appear to have any clue what was going on or what their rights were. I hope AA doesn’t get away without providing fair compensation.
Yes, a friend accepted a $4000 Visa Gift Card from Delta to take a later flight. Their routing was PDX-LAX-PVR, and Delta gave them the $4000 gift card and put them on a later Alaska Air nonstop. I was flying at the same time on American and was mad I didn’t get an offer like that!
Apparently ultimately EIGHT people took the $10,000 Visa gift card. Wow!
The only reason they offered that much money is if there was flight crew or pilots that were needed at next location, they would lose more that 80k if they did no have that extra staff fly to that loca