Over Sold Flights and Resulting Deals

[GordieHowl]

I was wondering what kind of deals the Airlines are offering to compensate Customers for the Airline's over booking flight policies ? These deals are normally offered when everyone is waiting to board the plane and extra people show up to find that the plane is already full. Xmas season and times with bad weather are the times the happens the most so lets hear Your stories !

[notanexpert]

When the "extra people" show up late for their flight, they're lucky if they are offered a seat on the next flight to their destination...

When there is too many people that show up on time, then it depends on the availability on other flights. For example, Air Canada to Frankfurt will just put people on the Lufthansa flight that leaves within the same hour and vice versa. If that is full, they will try to find a connecting flight that will satisfy the customer, and maybe offer them a travel voucher. If that is not an option then they start really handing out the cash or travel vouchers to get people to stay a night in a hotel at airline expense and go the next day. If that does not work, they may try that with other passengers that already have seats, if they will give up theirs for X amount of money and go the next day. Those are just some of the methods to get everyone to their destination resonably satisfied.

[dark169]

theres people over at flytalk that book flights this time of year in the effort of getting bumped. Flight vouchers, upgrade certs, ect. If your doing a millage run anyway and have decided to spend a weekend in airports its a good way to maximize your returns.

I've been on flights where they offered to put you on another flight and a free flight voucher, if I hadn't been on flying to meetings I would have taken it. The big risk is you end up not getting onto a later flight and spend a night somewhere...

[Pete_Coach]

I have been on quite a few flights where they overbooked and asked for volunteers to give up the seats. More often than not the offers get better the closer to flight time you get.
I have taken a days delay to go to London and got upgraded to business class. It made no matter to me because I was going a couple of days earlier than I needed to in order to get a better price on the flight. I have also seen people jump to the first offer of a $200 flight voucher. I was traveling with some colleagues and they took a buisness class upgrade and a departure two hours later for the flight to London but they went through Manchester.
I have also found that Air Canada is more apt to give better "upgrades" and make more "inconvenience payments" than a lot of other airlines. Some American carriers just say tough and you don't even give you a boarding pass or worse,(as in SouthWest), they call your name and tell you there are no seats, regardless of the fact you have a boarding pass.