Delta Found A Sneaky New Way To Avoid Oversold Flight Compensation

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Passengers on one Delta flight were reportedly offered something unusual instead of the typical oversold-flight compensation.

We all know “the ways” of airlines – they gamble that some passengers won’t show up, so they overbook the flight. And when everyone shows up after all and the plane has more passengers than seats, the airline starts offering passengers incentives, in the form of vouchers, upgrades on later flights, etc., to take a different flight.

This woman used the process to her advantage and, in addition to extending her vacation for days on end, also received over $3.5K in travel vouchers.

But Delta has figured out a way to potentially oversell a flight, get all its passengers to their intended cities on time, and avoid compensating them.

How?

They offer to send them on another flight to a nearby but different airport and make the switch for free.

A different way to solve oversold flights

It was described in a Reddit thread the other day, where the OP, U/jage9 wrote that they were sitting near a gate with an upcoming DCA flight and the airline just made an offer to anyone who would prefer to fly to IAD at a similar time, they could switch airports for free.

That’s genius!

Of course, only specific people would be willing to take them up on the offer. If someone had any of these circumstances, the offer might not be so appealing:

• You have a stopover
• Checked bags (the airline undoubtedly wouldn’t pull their luggage. But even then, if the person was flying home, even that might not be such a sacrifice – the airline could deliver it to their house)
• Rental car or pick up reservations (although those could probably be altered)
• Your car is parked at your original airport
• Your final destination is closer to your original airport

But there could be some people for whom the switch might not matter so much, or might even be advantageous.

I mean, if I were flying to EWR and they offered me a similar flight to JFK, I’d take it in a second because there’s an Uber Shuttle that goes from JFK into Manhattan. When I fly into EWR, I have to maneuver through NJ Transit.

This wouldn’t work everywhere

Of course, this offer wouldn’t work everywhere. It’s only larger cities (NYC, Dallas, Chicago, etc.) that have more than one airport in the area, and sometimes the airline will only service one of those airports. For example, United, American, Delta and Alaska all serve Chicago O’Hare (ORD) but not Midway (MDW). Meanwhile, Southwest serves Dallas Love Field (DAL) but not DFW.

But on those rare occasions when the stars align, it’s a smart way to get people to volunteer to get off the overbooked flight without compensating them a dime.

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