Current Events > Delta Reportedly Offered Passengers $10K To Give Up Seats On Oversold Flight

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/delta-10000-dollars-bumped-flight_n_62c0503ee4b0a21d84273d88

As major flight delays and cancellations worldwide continue to make headlines, Delta Air Lines wound up offering a huge chunk of change to passengers willing to leave an oversold flight, according to two passengers on the plane.

Inc. Magazine tech columnist Jason Aten tweeted this week that he had boarded a flight from Michigan to Minneapolis and Delta just offered $10,000 for people to give up their seats. The next day, he elaborated on the experience in a piece for Inc.

As we sat on the plane waiting to leave the gate, the announcement overhead explained that the flight was apparently oversold and they were looking for eight volunteers, he wrote. In exchange for their seats, Delta was offering $10,000 cash.

Even more enticingly, he said a flight attendant told passengers, If you have Apple Pay, youll even have the money right now.

Fellow passenger Todd McCrumb backed up Atens account, both on Twitter and in an interview with Fortune. An airline agent had initially offered $5,000 while people were still at the gate, but kept upping the amount when people werent taking it, McCrumb told Fortune.

McCrumb was traveling with his wife and said on Twitter she had health issues that prevented them from being able to leave the flight. In his piece for Inc., Aten said he did not take the offer for reasons Im not going to get into because my wife is still not pleased about it.

Delta Air Lines did not immediately return a request for comment from HuffPost. But a spokesperson gave a somewhat vague statement when reached by Fortune.

The ability to provide compensation empowers our employees to take care of our customers and get our aircraft out on time, the spokesperson said.

Airlines routinely overbook flights on purpose in anticipation that a certain percentage of passengers wont show up. When more ticketed passengers show up than there are seats on the plane, companies typically offer various incentives to get some people to rebook.

In 2017, Delta raised the maximum amount agents could offer passengers to $9,950 a huge bump from the previous maximum payout amount of $1,350, CNBC reported at the time. That decision came days after physician David Dao was violently dragged off of an overbooked United Airlines flight, prompting widespread outrage at United and Chicago airport police.

Cool. I'd do that.

Must have been a very important flight for everybody there for it to get to that point.

If it was a flight to go back home, i would definitely volunteer for that much money.
So long as they book me a different flight the next day.

Would be more difficult for me to accept it, if it was a flight to start my vacation.

I probably would have taken the 5k honestly. Easy to book a hotel for a night and get an uber.

How do flights still get oversold in 2022? Ill never understand that.

Im sure they can afford the 80k