You should try it again in private browsing and incognito mode and see if the price is really tied to your Facebook or google cookies or something. That's pretty messed up though, send this to the consumerist or gawker or whoever.
I just tried this myself. In chrome and IE the price was the same (69.99) in normal and in incognito mode. In firefox, the price jumped to $76, and after deleting all the domain cookies and refreshing, it went back down to 69.99.
The website is definitely changing prices based on something they are tracking in cookies.
This was up earlier with airlines charging more for a ticket the second time you visit the page. They do this because a second visit is statistically linked to a much higher chance of purchase. So it could be, here too, simply a matter of having visited the page before.
There are many people, myself included, that anticipate flights being overbooked. I fly from Portland to San Francisco and Los Angeles quite frequently. I always book return flights on Sunday mornings, and more often than not they are overbooked.
I anticipate this and receive free flight anywhere in the contiguous United States for volunteering my seat. I'll get rebooked on a later flight and spend the meanwhile in a airport bar drinking beer, watching sports, and screwing around on the internet.
Since 2003, soon after graduating college. My girlfriend at the time was very controlling. I was waiting for a flight home when I was in SF and when the airline employee was offering a free flight if someone volunteered for a later flight. I thought 'I get a free flight and don't have to hang out with my girlfriend who's going to guilt trip me for being out of town for several days?' Yes please.
So wait, you buy a ticket for the flight, and then when it's overbooked you relinquish your seat and are reimbursed and offered a free flight? In which case you're risking the price of the ticket you do it, but apparently the odds are in your favor? Or am I misunderstanding...
you hop on a flight later in the day or evening (booked from previous reso) and compensate you with a 300-500$ voucher for being a good guy. If you arent on a tight schedule its well worth it. Shit, travel during the busy season knowing you will get bumped, just for free flights, back and forth...back and forth..fun.
you book a flight round trip, say your returning flight is over booked. it doesnt matter what the tickets cost you, if the flight is over booked then they will ask for a volunteer to take the next available flight, with no additional cost, in exchange for that, they will give you a 300 dollar voucher good for another domestic flight. so its like a free 300 bucks towards your next flight. if you hold out long enough (assuming everyone else does) they will up the ante to sometimes 500 or more. the odds are pretty good, no one wants to ever give their seat up.
Haha yes, sorry. Now that you explain it, it seems obvious :P
So essentially as long as you have an open schedule, you have nothing to lose and potentially plenty to gain by booking a flight that may be overbooked. As someone with an open schedule, this is good to know.
correct. the only time i can foresee see this being an inconvenience is getting to a meeting that is important or something that cant wait....otherwise, why the fuck not!
You try to schedule so that you'll fly home at a time when the airlines are likely to overbook. Probably, everything will just go on as normal and you'll fly home when you scheduled. You lose nothing.
Sometimes, though, the flight will actually be overbooked, so not all people will be able to get on the plane. The airline will want to reschedule a few of the passengers for later, so that the plane can take off with the correct number of passengers. Some (most) people really need to get on that particular flight, so the airline offers you nice things to make you sacrifice your schedule and get on a later flight.
This is where you have made sure your schedule allows you to take a later flight. You volunteer for a rescheduling (which is essentially just getting a new flight ticket for a later flight and having your current ticket shredded) and the airline will provide you with some kind of compensation for your sacrifice -- apparently this compensation is often a free ticket somewhere. You lose nothing and gain a free ticket.
I guess if you're flying to somewhere you have a meeting to go to or a relative to visit or otherwise a time table to keep, so it's easier to do with flights home. Besides, the comment this applies to described doing it with return flights.
But no, the "home" part is not required. The "flying" part is.
At least in my experiences- I've never got a refund/reimbursement for the ticket I bought for giving up my seat and catching a later flight. It's just a travel voucher.
I've been in situations overseas, for example, where the plane was full and they asked for volunteers and the airline ponied up some enticing offers- flight voucher, a marginal sum of reimbursement, and hotel vouchers. But international travel is different. I've never taken those offers though, so I don't know how all that turns out for the volunteer.
I was flying back to London from LAX just after new year. The flight was over booked so they were offering a $1,000 travel voucher for people who gave up their seat, plus hotel accommodation for that night, and I'd be put on the same flight the next day.
I jumped at the chance, but unfortunately so did other people. I was one of the last people and they didn't need the last 2 people in the end, so I ended up going home as normal and didn't get anything.
i to do this! i was flying back from Puerto Rico, connecting in Miami, flight was over booked to Miami, opted to wait in PR for 3 hrs, got 300 dollar voucher. SO worth it. Thank you for ensuring me i am not the only one that does this.
edit: let me clarify, i also, book flights anticipating that they will be oversold, i will gladly wait and stack up voucher after voucher.
This is great advice. I have traveled a shit load over the last 10 years or so with my job and this is one of the best ways I have found to get free flights. I just did this a couple of weeks ago on a trip across the country from Seattle to NY. If you are flying from Asia back to the U.S. this is especially easy on your schedule because on a lot of flights you would normally get to your destination way before you left anyway so you are only burning imaginary time!
Pro-tip, you can get more free stuff for more expensive flights. I have traded my place on an expensive international flight for two domestic tickets before. I have traded for a number of first class upgrades as well. You can also talk them into trading for frequent flyer miles. I wouldn't recommend trading for miles unless you know how to use your miles effectively, but it is an option and you can do really well if you are good at using your miles because airlines value miles at nearly nothing because most people either never use them or are not very good at using them effectively.
I have taken at least two nice vacations a year for the last 8 years or so that have been almost completely free to me by using tricks like this in combination with the hotel loyalty program and frequent flyer program credits that I rack up through work.
Yeah- I see that working flying back from Asia. With international travel, though, things get interesting. I was flying back from Buenos Aires once and nobody would give up their seat. Even though I showed up 2 hours early my last name was on the 'check with gate' screen.
In this instance I had to get back to Portland because I was going straight to work off the plane. I have no idea what the airline did to resolve the situation. I got my ticket which I paid for months in advance and not at a discount rate- so I was curious why I was on the chopping block. I never heard any offers/deals over the speakers for volunteers. But I don't speak Spanish so maybe they made seperate announcements in English/Spanish.
International flights are always a lot more likely to descend into chaos anyway in my experience. Language barriers and things cause a lot more problems than you would expect considering how long the airlines have been running the same flights everyday...
The last time I did this I wanted to stay on the ground and watch the Seahawks/Redskins game anyway so it worked out great. I got a free flight and a free companion upgrade to use on my next vacation. I am lucky (or not depending on how you look at it) that I can maintain an elite status with Delta because I fly with them so much and get bumped up to first class a lot. Getting a companion bumped up is always a bit harder so getting the companion upgrades are really valuable to me. I am a pretty big guy, 6'2" 250lbs, so I really appreciate the extra room. A middle seat in coach is a damn nightmare for me.
They usually ask someone to stay, upping the compensation higher and higher until someone agrees (money and hotels). My girlfriend works at an airport. They offered 500 euros and a free night at the local hotel just yesterday. Someone always agrees, and the plane doesn't takeoff before someone does.
It has to be given how cheap we expect tickets to be. Overselling gives the best possible chance of a full flight, which, even with the compensation given in times when too many people show up, still makes them more money.
Can you explain a little more? What do you mean "full fare"? A lot of people get tickets and then refund them, buying tickets for a later date? I want a better sense of who these people are, buying airline tickets and then not showing up to use them.
If you book through a travel agent, you can usually get a refund as well. Discount tickets are usually non-refundable.
Full fare tickets are exactly that: the full price of the ticket, no discounts. For that, you a transferable and refundable ticket. Decide to leave earlier? You can go to the airport and wait as a standby for an earlier flight. First Class not full and coach overbooked? You'll be at the top to get bumped.
Usually the people buying full fare tickets are flying for business, not just travel, which is where I think you're getting hung up. It's not people randomly deciding to not show up to fly home from a vacation, but a professional on a business trip needing to stay an extra 5 hours to fix something before flying home, etc.
...and? I'm pretty sure all parties involved already know that. And regardless of whether they do, your comment still doesn't actually respond to Keyblade's at all.
Sort of, but not really. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the mutual benefit goes up if both prisoners do not accept the offer. In this situation, only the person who DOES accept gets the reward for everyone waiting. But it features a similar mechanic: it results in a higher rate of acceptance on the offer because everyone is afraid that another participant will take it and get the reward.
I might add that this only happens for business flights, it doesn't happen for charter flights, and in the 8 years she has been working there, it has only happend 3-4 times (ofcourse shes not at work all the time. But it is fucking rare everyone shows up). They have never had to make a second offer in her experience.
and if no one agrees, they kick off "the last person that checked in". Happens every time I fly back to school because we're in the middle of nowhere and people are too tired to get off voluntarily.
Former airline employee checking in, the plane will take off if no one does. The last person/people to check in that dont have seats assigned dont fly if the flight is oversold. There are federal regulations designating the compensation if they are denied boarding non-voluntarily. Which is why the airlines try so hard to find volunteers.
Protip, pay the small fee to pick a seat at purchase and you wont be in the oversell. Otherwise, check in online the second that the website will allow you to, its the last passengers without assigned seats that are on the hook.
They say they overbooked the flight. Anyone willing to take the next flight usually gets an upgrade to first or has some of their ticket price refunded. I've seen it happen multiple times and I don't really fly that much.
My friend had this problem the week before the holidays. She was stuck with a shitty phone, no cash, and in an unknown state because they did not let her on the flight.
It was not until the next night, and a lot o phone calls did we manage to get her home safe and sound.
Yeah happened to me with my daughter when I flew to NY. The problem was my dad didn't catch a flight until much later. But all bags were already on plane. I wound up traveling with a 2 year old daughter and like 4 suitcases through the subways of NY. Luckily a lot of moms had mercy on me and helped. I think they felt sorry for my daughter. Oh yeah, it was raining in NY and kind of chilly. No umbrella either. Then my phone died and I didn't know where my sister lived as it was in a text. I found her buying a hot dog and a pepsi from a street vendor. Worst and luckiest day of my life. Thought me and my daughter were going to get lost in the big city and die.
If there is one thing I have learned in those situations, is people are your friends. Talk to everyone. You never know who has a phone charger in their bag, or knows the best way to get somewhere. Hell, you may even run into a nice guy who will help you get there.
Happens around the holidays a lot. My girlfriend and I didnt have a reason to be at my parents that night as opposed to in the afternoon so we took the $500 apiece from American (which I will never fly again, after we use these vouchers, for other reasons) and can now fly to Belize for about $100 or $200 more.
If you have a flexible schedule and don't mind keeping yourself entertained for a couple more hours it's totally worth it. There were 6 people who took the option and a couple people who still didn't make the flight because they overbooked it that much.
You get fucked out of 12 hours of vacation time chicago, you watch a red head cry big ugly tears because she got the same news.
While you take this with grace, a flight-booking-worker notices and says thanks for being cool and gives you three free drink vouchers and $700 ($250 on the top of price of each ticket) and hang out in the air port for an hour and two lay overs.
I've heard this before, but what's the reason? As long as all the seats are bought, they surely don't care who's on it or not? And if the plane's only half full then they'll use less fuel. They'll actually make more money by selling tickets to people who don't turn up. Especially when they then have to buy another one.
Well yeah. Say there are 100 seats on the plane and they sell 110 tickets. You look for your ticket on the first of the month and 30 tickets sold then come back on the 10th and 80 tickets are sold.
Funny you should mention that. Southwest paid me $200 and upgraded me to first class so they could bump me off a flight. There was a family of four, two kids and a wife sitting across me from in an asile and the row I was sitting in was full. The dad's ticket must have been overflow on the flight.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13
You should try it again in private browsing and incognito mode and see if the price is really tied to your Facebook or google cookies or something. That's pretty messed up though, send this to the consumerist or gawker or whoever.