The Airline Bump

Bob Dancer’s column this week was about a recent experience when he volunteered to be bumped from an airline flight.   This got me thinking about some of our similar experiences.

Actually, the airline bump has been one of our favorite frugal ideas since our first one at the Las Vegas airport in March of 1985, when we scored $800 from TWA to delay our trip back to Indianapolis.  Back then that would give us our next two trips back to Vegas for free, true manna from heaven we thought.  The next 10 years was our heyday of the bump, with a score of 15, sometimes even 2 in one day, out of our 60 round trips and 200 volunteer opportunities.  Adding bump money to more-generous-back-then frequent flier benefits, we were awash with travel dollars, financing several overseas flights as well as our numerous trips to Las Vegas during this period.

In the mid-90’s, this gold mine started producing fewer opportunities, and then in 1999 we moved to Vegas and we were making fewer flights.  We still volunteer almost every time we fly, but the airlines seem to be doing a better job guestimating  just how many people who buy a ticket will actually show up for that particular flight.  We usually fly Southwest and so many times in the last couple of years every single seat is full of paying customers, not just stand-by’s. (Bob mentioned in his article that bumping happens when the airline sells your seat for a last-minute price which is higher than what they are paying you to give up your seat.  I had never heard of this – perhaps a new development?  I had always heard that airlines overbook because there are always a certain number of passengers who don’t show up on the particular flight they have booked.  Maybe they have changed their reservations at the last minute, they have missed their connections, or – in Vegas – perhaps they couldn’t leave a hot crap table!)

Back in 1985 we would have taken a bump no matter how inconvenient it was.  We were scrambling to build our gambling bankroll – and we were younger and healthier.  We couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take a bump.  Now we are older – and hopefully a little wiser and less judgmental – and we are more understanding about individual differences.  So many different personalities, so many different life goals.  Hundreds of thousands of people have read my book, The Frugal Gambler, which has a whole chapter on this subject, “The Bump – Airline Comps.”  Thank goodness not every reader took this chapter to heart, or we would have to get to the airport two hours earlier than we already do and stand in line for long periods at the agent desk  so we would be sure to be first on the bump volunteer list.

So, don’t be a volunteer bumpee if that doesn’t appeal to you or your schedule doesn’t permit it.  But if this sounds like something you would like to do and you need more information, you might find that one chapter in my book will more than pay its cost – even if you aren’t much of a gambler.  And if you are a gambler, it might allow you to have a fatter gambling bankroll!