No Airline Seat, and No Compensation

Q. I recently was bumped from a flight because the airline overbooked it. Why didn’t I qualify for compensation?

A. It depends on how you were bumped, and when you finally reached your destination.

When flights are oversold, as they often are, airlines first ask for volunteers to give up their seats. Those volunteers typically are compensated. But when there are not enough willing takers, involuntary bumping begins. The first passengers targeted are usually those who were the last to check in or who paid the least for their seats.

According to Department of Transportation rules, an airline is not required to pay those who are involuntarily bumped if it arranges substitute travel that is scheduled to arrive at their final destination within one hour of the original time.

If an alternative arrival is later than one hour, bumped passengers are compensated. The airline may offer you a ticket for a future flight, but you have the right to insist on cash instead.

The DOT rules say that if your new domestic flight arrives one to two hours after your original scheduled landing (one to four hours for an international flight), the compensation must be equal to the one-way fare to your final destination, with a $400 maximum. If the new domestic flight arrives more than two hours later (more than four hours for an international flight), the airline must pay twice the cost of your one-way fare, up to $800.

Even if you receive cash as “denied boarding compensation,” you can keep your original ticket and use it on the same flight at a later date.

Loophole list

There are several other loopholes under which airlines aren’t required to compensate those who are bumped involuntarily:

• To qualify for any payment, you must have a confirmed reservation for your original ticket and you must have met any required reconfirmation deadline.
• Some airlines also require you to have checked in at the departure gate within a certain time frame, which can be an hour beforehand for domestic flights and three hours on international flights.
• If the airline must substitute a smaller plane for the one it originally planned to use, it isn’t required to pay people who are bumped as a result.
• Finally, the rules do not apply to charter flights, or to scheduled flights operated with planes that hold fewer than 30 passengers, or to international flights inbound to the United States.

Anytime you’re bumped involuntarily, the airline must give you a written statement describing your rights and explaining how it decides who gets to board and who doesn’t.

Sid Kirchheimer writes about health and consumer issues.