A video from a young traveler went viral on TikTok for refusing to accept a $10,000 flight credit on JetBlue to take a later flight to Cancun. Eventually, JetBlue found a passenger willing to accept a $15,000 credit for a bump. Is there such a deficit in trust between airlines and passengers that people wouldn’t clamor for these offers?
Seriously? Passengers Turn Down Bump With $1o,ooo Flight Credit To Take Later JetBlue Flight To Cancun
I could only dream to be offered a $10-15K to take a later flight. Unless it was to a wedding or funeral, I cannot imagine another scenario in which it would not take sense to miss a day of vacation in order to to take the credit. But apparently most on the plane had a different point of view than me.
@riesjess its been 45 mins. #springbreak #cancun #mexico #jetblue
The video starts with Jess Ries complaining that her flight to Cancun cannot take off because JetBlue cannot find someone willing to be voluntarily denied boarding:
“Supposed to be on the way to Cancun but we can’t leave until one person gives up their seat. They’re offering $10,000 and no one will take it.”
Millions of users were incredulous Ries did not take the offer. She later explained:
“They started offering a ton of money to anyone who would give up their seat, but it was flight credit, not cash.
“They told us that the flight credit was only valid for JetBlue flights within one year and considering the fact that JetBlue doesn’t have flights to that many destinations, it didn’t seem realistic for me to spend $10,000 in flight credit on Jet Blue.
“I’m on a spring break trip with 30 of my friends and no one wanted to leave the group or ditch the trip.”
Her reasoning is as much a damning indictment of the vacation system in the USA more than anything else. JetBlue actually travels to more than 100 destinations across the USA, as well as Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and London. All Ries needed was some time and she could have flown a few of her friends to London in business class or even potentially all 30 of her friends on a shorter route.
CONCLUSION
Admittedly, stories like this actually hurt me to read…how can you turn down such a generous offer to go a few hour or even a day later to Cancun? Seriously? But Ries was hardly alone: every passenger on the plane turned down the $10,000 offer.
What is your thresholds for accepting a voluntary denied boarding credit? Do you have a dollar figure in mind?
I’d abandon my whole trip for a $15,000 flight credit! That is a whole lot of Mint possibilities right there.
You can also book Emirates Business/First Class flights using the JetBlue website as well! Personally, I would’ve taken it for a free Emirates First Class flight as part of a vacation somewhere.
Vacation costs more than the flight – and these people heading home know that all too well. Lost days off work, hotel, cab, meals out.
Sure it’s a no brainer in absolute value, but it will cost $$ out of pocket many to realize most were not planning to spend if they vacation 1-2x a year. Maybe it saves a couple $800 in airfare on their next trip if they didn’t have the means / desire for ‘extra’ trips.
I had an offer to take $5k on Southwest recently. I wasn’t in a particular rush to get home, but I fly Southwest maybe once a year, if that. I realized there was no way I’d ever be able to spend $5k on Southwest flights, particularly since they don’t fly TATL or have any premium cabin whatsoever. So it wasn’t worth it to me. JetBlue has Mint, as you pointed out, so I’d definitely have been a taker at $10-15k for that bump. Take the whole family back to London in Mint, not bad.
Too bad it wasn’t Delta where you can get an AmEx gift card for the amount
This is insane if true. $10,000 in compensation had no takers? For a later flight.
This is a huge reason why we have inflation. When prices rise it should result in a decrease of demand to balance the scales. But when your average American feels so rich that they can turn down $10,000 in free money then it’s clear demand will continue unabated for the foreseeable future.
People complain about high prices but still buy the products! That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
It’s not inflation as this is flight credit, which is basically worth zero cash value outside the booking site of the airline company. A voucher is basically like a coupon, so you can offer as much as you want but it’s worthless outside the confines of the company’s booking website so it has zero impact on the overall economy. It does nothing for the company as they’re not getting any profit as they’re not taking in any money from the customer or anything.
Now if you meant $10k in cash, then I would slightly agree. However, giving out $10K in cash doesn’t impact inflation overall. In the US’s economy, in order to impact the economy with inflation, you need to be giving out billions or trillions to have an impact on inflation, as we’ve seen with the covid stimulus (not that I’m disparaging the stimulus, but showing from a neutral pov that the stimulus has caused significant inflation in our country).
I understand this doesn’t impact inflation and that it’s only a flight credit. My point was that we have inflation because your average American feels so rich that $10,000 doesn’t influence them.
Prices keep going up but it doesn’t have an impact on demand. People complain but still purchase the product. For prices to come down demand must decrease.
And yes, a flight credit isn’t cash. But do you think all 150+ people on the flight know that? Nobody was persuaded by $10,000 of “something”. That’s insane.
Cash yes, flight credit no.
Unless you’re retired or have an awful lot of vacation days to use up this credit, or a good portion of it, would be not used in its entirety.
My favorite bump ever was one I took on AA. They offered a voucher for a couple hundred bucks (I was a poor student at the time, so anything seemed like a lot of money). This was on the first leg of my trip, so they offered me the voucher, plus a confirmed seat on the next flight which would still allow me to take the same connecting flight. So I got $300 or so and still made it to my destination at exactly the same time. That’s a win-win right there.
The real question is, how on earth does one manage to maintain a group of 30 friends these days! Much less one that can organize a trip together. Group planning is exponentially harder per extra person
I still don’t understand how this works. Can the airline simply pick someone if nobody wants it?
Last time something like this happened to me was last Christmas. After 3 years without seeing family in Brazil we booked 4 business class tickets to my family of 4 to fly there. We were flying on 12/23 to get there on 12/24 and spend Christmas with our family. That for us was a big event that we would never consider changing. As we get to the gate in Atlanta I hear my name being called by the gate agent. As I get there another agent smiles to me and says “Oh, so you are taking our offer to give up your 4 seats and fly tomorrow night?” I had no idea what he was talking about since we had just arrived at the gate area. Apparently they were overbooked by 6 and were offering $2,500 in cash (gift cards) per seat. The agent that called my name immediately intervened and said to the other guy “don’t even dream about taking their seats.” Well, the guy was calling me to check our passports. We were in paid business class and Diamond medallion so we would be the last ones they would mess up. Anyway, it would be $10k in cash for the 4 of us to stay but I didn’t even consider it for a second.
The people waiting at the gate are typically traveling on a “Basic” fare where seats are assigned at check-in, and they were the last party to check-in. The seats on their boarding passes probably say “Assign at Gate”. Every airline has a policy that requires them to solicit bids for volunteers for bumping passengers, raising the bid up to the policy maximum. Someone almost always volunteers to offload when the $$$ gets high enough, but if they didn’t then those people awaiting seat assignments at the gate would be the ones “picked” to be bumped, and would be given some amount of compensation.
Maybe you can clarify how the laws actually work, but I can’t imagine JetBlue giving $15k in flight credit to accommodate a $89 basic economy passenger. It doesn’t make sense,
That is my point. Why would they go to $15k instead of just selecting someone to get booted after nobody takes let’s say $2,000.
By law on a domestic flight the airline could max out at $1,550 compensation for a denied boarding.
However most airlines set their own policy maximums for volunteers much higher, primarily for PR purposes. For example, after the Dr. Dao incident United and Delta both pledged to go up to $10k. Apparently JetBlue can go up to at least $15k. Why? Because they know that paying those amounts is insanely rare. Normally someone will bite for $200 or $300, and having such a high maximum makes the airline look generous. The $15k in this story is an extreme outlier.
Normally, I imagine they (the airline as a whole, not the individual gate agent_ are taking into account a few things:
1. Flight credit versus cash…and IDB would be due a large amount of CASH, plus re-accommodation, meal vouchers, hotel and ground transfers, etc. A flight credit requires no actual cash outlay on the part of the airline. Sure there is opportunity cost for the flight credit but…
2. Fees. On most fares, people are going to be sources of ancillary revenue for the airline. Drinks, checked bags, etc. If not on B6, WiFi and snacks can be included here, as well. Fees are much higher margin than the airfare itself.
3. Spoilage. Like many have mentioned, there is very little chance an average traveler can even use a $15,000 credit in a year. B6 is counting on that. Even with lower numbers, there is a chance the credit doesn’t get used, or that it gets applied toward the value of a higher-cost trip to cover part of a ticket.
Yes they can, but once they involuntarily bump someone, the ball is now in the passengers court. And if that passenger is savvy enough they can really get some serious profit out of it. Airlines will give out credit because it’s not really a huge hit to them and they can still profit out of it. If you are bumped you have the right to request and receive cash. So if they’re offering 15k in credit you could then counter that you want 15k in cash. More than likely, the airline is going to say no and try to raise the credit to make it more appealing to you than the cash. I’m sure you could get 25-30k in airline credit before they pulled the trigger and gave you 15k in cash.
One caveat, you typically can only use these flight credits for yourself (the future tickets must be in your name). So you wouldn’t be able to treat your friends to a vacation with it. Even with that being said, I would have taken it in a second!
Totally not worth it unless you could get tickets for other people. I mean you’d have to go to London at least 3 times in one year if you price a rt at 5K each and that is being super generous.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Maybe many travelers didn’t foresee a lot of travel the next twelve months on JetBlue. Apparently the flight credit is not transferrable to other people, you can’t sell it in the open market, can’t buy tickets for others, etc. So for many users, the voucher is worth max a couple hundred dollars.
I’ve gotten JetBlue flight credit before (although in a much smaller amount than in this story). It is deposited in your Travel Bank, so you can use it for flights within a year. The credit can be used to book tickets for anyone you choose (so it’s not like an eCredit in a specific passenger’s name). In my case the flight credits for my family were all deposited in my JetBlue account, and I could use them for us or anyone else I wanted. Also, you have 12 months to use the credit before it expires, so you could wait until it almost expires and book a flight at the end of the schedule (effectively 2 years away). And it’s pretty straightforward to make a dummy booking and then modify the booking dates later, so you could extend these credits for several years if you kept modifying the bookings (rather than cancelling a booking with an expired travel bank credit).
Wow. The auction market for seats is heating up. I need to branch out to this segment.
I would be much more willing to take cash compensation to take a later flight than a flight credit. I never usually seriously contemplate a flight credit offer but do if it’s cash. For many of us, the value of a flight credit should be discounted significantly from face value given that they 1) usually expire within 1 year 2) restrict use to a certain airline that you may not want to fly again 3) require you to actually plan on having future travel within 12 months. I’m almost sure that Jetblue would have been able to find a flyer willing to defer for $1000 cash or maybe even $500 cash instead of the credit. I agree with the author’s point that it’s an indictment of the paltry holiday time Americans have but to me this is simple: offer cash and not a credit and you’ll find it ALOT easier to get people to self-bump.
As an addition: I would also be much more willing to consider a flight credit IF they actually made the expiry date far less tight. A 3 or 5-year expiration would make me much more willing to consider the flight credit. But of course, airlines carry these flight credits on their balance sheet (though I’m very sure they don’t price the liability at face value), so they’re loathe to do that.
You forget that you have the ability to fly at a moment’s notice. If you only have two weeks vacation, having $15K in vouchers you can’t use is somewhat useless.
Well,
If you get bumped the airline has to offer you cash if you request it and decline credit. If they’re offering 10k in airline credit I’m sure they’d go up to 15k in credit if you requested the 10k in cash. It’s a really common way to get a little extra out of your offers. Furthermore, if it got ran all the way up to 10k they must have had to raise it up more than a few times so respect for the passengers for not jumping on it. It’s always so sad to see an airline need to bump 20 people and you see a line of people accepting the first offer.
I’d most likely take this offer but I’d be a little torn because he could have definitely been better.
A couple of years ago, on a short flight, and as a 1K in paid F, I found that my seat was broken, and UA offered $800 and a seat on the next flight to anyone willing to give up their seat. I’d have take it myself, but I was flying to a wedding.
I really lucked out eleven years ago this week when I was flying back from the Frozen Four in St. Paul! Delta offered a $400 voucher, hotel room for the night, dinner and breakfast vouchers, and first class on the morning flight to Detroit for me to give up my seat. Didn’t have dogs yet to get back to or a dogsitter to relieve. Couldn’t retrieve my luggage, but the airport hotel was at the edge of the Mall of America parking lot, so I was able to walk over and buy a bathing suit to enjoy the hotel hot tub and clean socks for the next day. (Always have clean boxers in the laptop bag.) Friends picked me up to go out for a drink.
https://mhaithaca.livejournal.com/1363786.html
Ended up getting laid off the following winter, and was able to use that $400 voucher to join friends for a jaunt to San Jose the following spring that would’ve been tough to afford otherwise. All worked perfectly!
$10,000 or $15,000 travel credit would be tough to turn down, but on the way somewhere with a group, with all the rides and hotel and other logistics set, I can imagine it could be a real challenge to rearrange everything.
One thing to consider for a vacation is that sometimes hotels and resorts have a rule that if you aren’t present at check-in on that day, they’ll cancel the rest of your vacation. I think most hotels would be ok and let you check in a day late.
Does anyone know if jetBlue flight credits can be used for booking jetBlue Vacations, or for that matter, Aer Lingus or AA codeshare flights?
Traveling with kids– I routinely travel with a spouse and 2 kids. Any offer under $3k wouldn’t even be worth listening to for me.
Right, but how about $10K…
Glad jet blue learned from United Dr. Dao incident. An easy $15k in credits vs $140 mil, drawn out litigation and awful PR!
…that $15k seems like nothing, perspective!
More of an indictment on JetBlue and this airline notion that a flight credit has an expiration date! I’ll bet if it was offered as a non-expiring credit they would have gotten takers, but, in reality, many people have their time off sketched out already over the next year and would not be able to fit in a trip like that.
$10,000 credit… yes please! I will even forfeit the whole Cancun trip.
If I am flexible enough with my schedule, I can do at least three RT to London with Mint (even Mint Studios).
$15,000 credit… that is a Mint trip to London for my family of four.
Remember you are upper class. The average American only gets 2 weeks vacation per year. Many passengers would have no ability to use the credit in the next year.
What a bunch of dopes……….. Take the 10k and runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn fast to the nearest next flight!! 15k is even better.
I was returning to Germany from a business trip when they needed 7 or 8 volunteers on the ATL-DUS segment, an afternoon flight. Their (DL) first offer was $400 in flight credit or Amex voucher plus hotel and the same flight at the next day. I checked that there were seats available on a connecting flight via Paris the same night, negotiated for that and was the last one to agree at $800 (which, by their rules, everyone else got, too). Only mistake I made was not to ask for a lounge pass.