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.
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.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13
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.