Win the Bumping Game

When flying, you can minimize your change of delay -- and score some travel perks -- with a little knowledge of your passenger rights.

By Jane Bennett Clark, Senior Associate Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance

November 9, 2007

You fight the traffic, negotiate the parking, slog through security -- and then get the boot because your plane is overbooked. Unfair as it seems, airlines can legally bump you even if you have a confirmed reservation and a kid getting married 3,000 miles away. And although the odds are slim that you'll get bumped involuntarily -- about one in 10,000 -- the number of disappointed non-passengers in the first nine months of 2007 was up 4% over the same period in 2006.

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But a little knowledge of how bumping works, and of your rights as a bumpee, minimizes your chance of delay -- and may even win you some travel perks. The following rules apply to domestic flights.

Play the odds

Timing, as they say, is everything. Bumps tend to happen most often on Sunday evenings, Monday mornings, Thursday nights and Friday mornings, and usually on heavily traveled routes, such as New York City to L.A., says Bob Jones, who writes about travel for OneTravel.com.

One way to help ensure you'll get airborne is to choose your airline carefully. JetBlue, for example, bumps so rarely that only 43 passengers -- three of whom volunteered -- gave up seats in the first nine months this year. Conversely, you're most likely to be grounded if you fly Delta, Comair or Atlantic Southeast, which had the three worst records for overbooking during the same nine-month period. (For a list of airlines and their bumping rates, check out the Air Travel Consumer Report at the Department of Transportation's Web site.)

If you really want to make that wedding, arrive at the airport at least an hour early, check your bags promptly, and make sure your spot on the plane is earmarked. "If you have a seat assignment, there's a 99.9% chance you're going," says Tom Parsons of the membership travel site Bestfares.com. Paying top dollar or having frequent-flier status makes you golden, too.

Know your rights

Before bumping anyone, airlines are required to ask for volunteers and then offer them compensation and a seat on a later flight. Airlines may first try to elicit volunteers by offering vouchers for miles, but deal-making here is de rigueur. Parsons says he once watched bumpees on a flight to Mexico negotiate $800 in compensation, plus hotel accommodations and first-class seats on the next day's flight.

Some travelers, says Jones, routinely offer their seats even before an overbooking announcement is made. They may win frequent-flier miles as a token of gratitude, he says, even if they don't get bumped. The Aviation Consumer Protection Division of the Department of Transportation recommends that you not trade in any ticket until you have a confirmed seat on a later flight and know whether vouchers you're offered have blackouts or reservations restrictions.

Lacking volunteers, agents usually target the last passengers to arrive at the gate. If that happens to you, you'll receive a written statement describing your rights (small comfort as you watch the plane depart) and promising you a seat on another flight. If you can be booked on a flight that will get you to your destination within one hour of your original arrival time, you're entitled to nothing except maybe an apology. But if you'll be one to two hours late, the airline owes you cash: the cost of the fare to your destination, up to $200. If you are delayed by more than two hours, the compensation doubles, to as much as $400.

You're out of luck if you haven't bought your ticket at least 30 minutes before the plane departs or met the deadline for checking in. Most airlines require that you get to the gate at least ten minutes before departure time; some insist on as much as an hour.

Even if you've done everything by the book, you still get bupkis if the airline decides to switch to a smaller plane and squeezes you off the flight, or if you're on a chartered flight or a plane that holds 60 or fewer passengers -- unless you're dealing with a particularly nice ticket agent.

--Reporter: Amy Esbenshade

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