I have soooo many bumped stories I could tell but here is one… I haven’t encountered that many ‘bumping’ situations lately but about 10 to 15 years ago, it seemed to happen quite regularly. In fact, I actually used to plan trips around the idea of getting bumped… leave a bit earlier than I wanted and of course with a computer, one can work anywhere so no big deal if bumped, especially if an airline lounge freebie is part of the deal.
Anyway, I was travelling from Toronto to New Orleans via Chicago on United and while I was at the gate in Chicago, the request came out for volunteers. At that very moment, I happened to be sitting looking out the window down at the plane and it appeared that there was a quite bit of a flurry of activity below me with a bunch of mechanics. After watching this for a minute and not seeing much action at the counter, I sauntered over and said “I won’t take your $300 but if you offer me $500, $30 in food coupons and get me on a plane within 4 hours, we got a deal.” She said yes and so after the paperwork was done, I grabbed my food coupons and went for lunch. About 1 ½ hrs later, after lunch and a couple of beers at Chilis, I was walking about and ended up passing by the gate for the plane for which I volunteered to vacate my seat. Since there was a bit of activity there, I sauntered up to the counter since it looked like they were loading the plane. I asked the person behind the counter what was going on and was told “we had some mechanical problems earlier but that’s been fixed and we are just about done loading up and ready to push off for New Orleans.” So I asked “Oh, I was supposed to be on a later flight but can you put me on this one?” She said “Hmmmmm….. let me check. We were overbooked earlier but with the mechanical problems, we had a few folks get on the American flight. Yup…. As a matter of fact, I do have a few seats. Give me your ticket and I’ll get you on.”
I remember thinking as we were pushing off from the dock…..”gee, I don’t think that could have worked out better……”
That’s an incredible story!