Shirley and I recently spent a week cruising southeast Alaska on the Norwegian Pearl out of Seattle. We planned the trip with two couples we know from square dancing. All four of our friends have attended at least one of my classes, but these folks are not advantage gamblers.
On the Sunday we disembarked back in Seattle, we were waiting for a shuttle to take us to SeaTac airport where we were all scheduled to return to Las Vegas on the same Southwest Airlines flight. I told the others that Shirley and I were going to try to be bumped. Being bumped means being paid well to wait around the airport for an extra three or four hours while the airline sells your seat for a last-minute price which is higher than what they are paying you to give up your seat.
How much you receive when you’re bumped varies depending on a number of things including how much you originally paid for the flight and how badly they need the seat. On this particular flight, being bumped would probably net us $500 apiece in fully transferable airline credits which would have to be redeemed within one year. As much as we fly, this is essentially the same as cash.
I told our friends that earning an extra $1,000 from SWA (i.e. $500 apiece for Shirley and me) was similar to earning an extra $1,000 in a casino jackpot or drawing except we didn’t have to play extra to get it. All we had to do was show up at the terminal and ask if they needed bumpees. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.
There have been occasions when we wouldn’t volunteer for bumping. At the start of this trip, for example, being bumped would have meant missing the cruise. That would not have been acceptable. None of us can be flexible all of the time, but many of us can be flexible in our travel plans some of the time. People who are trying to accumulate wealth often find they can be more flexible on this than they previously believed. On this particular Sunday, I was planning on playing $10,000 coin-in at both Gold Coast and Sam’s Town after I got home to take advantage of a “7x points on Sundays in August” promotion. My EV at each place was less than $100. Earning an extra $500 from Southwest Airlines would have added up to more than that. If there was only room for one of us to be bumped, Shirley would stay behind because I had profitable things to do back in Vegas. But if we could both be bumped, that was better yet.
Our friends had very limited experience with volunteering to be bumped. I explained to them the procedure, but told them that if there was room for only one or two bumpees, Shirley and I were ahead of them on the list. Sharing this information was equivalent in my mind to telling them about a good play at a casino–it’s an advantage play I was sharing with my friends. I was, I believed, giving them a gift of valuable knowledge that they didn’t have previously.
As it turned out, these folks weren’t interested. One had volunteered to be bumped several years ago and ended up sleeping all night in an airport because of a problem with the connecting flight. This so traumatized her that she made a rule of “never again” when it came to bumping. To me, the problem with the connecting flight was unrelated to the actual bumping process. It could have happened just as easily to the plane she was bumped FROM as to the plane she was bumped TO. Nevertheless, this lady had made her “never again” rule and wasn’t interested in budging. Her boyfriend didn’t have a strong opinion on the subject of being bumped, but since she did, he went along with her position. Relationship-wise, this was probably a smart idea.
The other woman planned on going to a 5:30 p.m. religious service that evening and being bumped would have gotten in the way of that. I’m not religious, but this was “just” a regular weekly mass, so it didn’t seem like a big deal to me. She was being given a choice between $1,000 for the two of them or going to the church service. And she chose the service??? This is so far away from what I would have chosen that it borders on being incomprehensible. I wonder how many other people would have made the same choice.
The second man was simply psychologically ready to get home. He’d been on the road for seven days and was tired from so much vacation. He didn’t want any extra hurdles to jump before he got home. If one came up that he couldn’t avoid (perhaps the regularly scheduled flight would be delayed, or maybe there would be extra traffic after he landed), then he’d deal with it. But voluntarily taking on a delay wasn’t something he was interested in doing. And as is true of many seniors (in addition to some non-seniors as well), once he had decided on a course of action, he wasn’t very open to changing plans.
This was okay with Shirley and me. Whether our friends chose to be bumped or not was up to them. But it struck me as strange that they would walk away from such a sizeable amount of “easy money.” Shirley and I see being bumped as potentially a wonderful opportunity. It’s a no-brainer decision for us to get bumped frequently. Probably $50,000 or so of our current wealth (bankroll) has come from looking for opportunities to be bumped. This is simply one of many ways we look for an edge.
As it turned out, the flight was pretty full, but not completely full, and nobody got bumped this time. Okay. That’s not a rare result at all. But our names were first on the list to be bumped if that opportunity arose.
My first thought about our friends’ refusal to be bumped was that they were being very stubborn and short-sighted. While none of them are hurting financially, $500 apiece strikes me as more than enough money to justify being delayed three hours. It’s not like they are stupid people. They are each fairly bright and knowledgeable in their own area of expertise. I was amazed that they couldn’t see what a good value this was.
Upon reflection, I now believe that if I had brought this subject up several days earlier and let them think about it for a while, some or all of them would have decided that it was a smart idea to try to be bumped. But since I sprung it on them at, more or less, the last minute, they weren’t able to think through the possibilities that quickly. (They actually had four hours or so before the flight but their psychological window for changing plans had already closed.) But on their next flight? Maybe. They’ve now had the chance to ruminate for a while on that idea and so they may well have absorbed it into their “bag of tricks.” Or maybe not. Being stubborn and short-sighted often isn’t an easily cured disease.
It’s for reasons like this that I study LOTS of different promotions–in casinos and out. I never know when one will arise again, and when one does, my decisions will be better if I’ve thought it through beforehand rather than if I make a quick decision on the fly.
You may not see this article as being related to gambling. If so, you and I disagree. I definitely believe that looking for the opportunity to be bumped is part of the same mindset as looking for advantage plays.