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Home » Airline Bumps » Easy Bump or Illusory Hope? Gauging my Chances for a VDB Opportunity on United Today
Airline BumpsUnited Airlinesvdb

Easy Bump or Illusory Hope? Gauging my Chances for a VDB Opportunity on United Today

Matthew Klint Posted onNovember 29, 2009November 14, 2023 2 Comments

I am scheduled to fly from Ontario, CA (ONT)-SFO-ORD-PHL later today and am hoping that I will get the opportunity to give up my seat on one of the flights. Unfortunately, it looks like my best shot is ONT-SFO even though a call to United Reservations revealed that the flight is actually booked even and NOT oversold.

First, take a look at afternoon/evening flights out of Southern California today on United:a screen shot of a table

Looks promising. My flight is #6 on the list above:

Invalid request error occurred.

My connection to ORD has 9+ seats avaialble in both F and Y so I doubt I will get a VDB chance on this flight:

Invalid request error occurred.

The other redeyes to ORD (three planes, including a 777, leaving in the 2300 hour for ORD!) are not zeroed out either:

a group of black text

My final flight to PHL is F2, Y2, but in my experience, there is always quite a few no-shows for 0600 flights.

Invalid request error occurred.

It will be interesting to see what happens now. Although I am not expecting a bump today, it wouldn’t surprise me if I get up to SFO fine but have a VDB opportunity there, despite the F9/Y9 availability right now, especially with the chance of snow in the forecast for tomorrow in good ol’ Chicagoland.

I’ll let you know what happened tomorrow.

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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2 Comments

  1. Lucky Reply
    November 29, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    I’ve given up trying to predict bumps. They never happen when I expect them. I’ve found that once in a while agents aren’t all that honest when it comes to how full a flight is booked. While they don’t typically oversell by a whole lot over the holidays, I doubt it’s sold even if it’s zeroed out. As far as the other flights go, I’m kind of surprised the flights aren’t fuller, but then again, you never know…

    Good luck and let us know!

  2. Gray Reply
    November 30, 2009 at 12:57 am

    See you (possibly!) on 652, tonight. My 6am ORD – LGA flight has full zeroes, as well, but I don’t know how much I trust inventory management or people to show up for a 6am flight. We’ll see. Might get interesting.

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