Giving up your seat or getting bumped from a flight can be quite profitable.
On the way home from our winter break trip to Austin, Texas, the Michael W Travels family received $2,700 in Delta Airlines vouchers for giving up our three seats on the flight back to NYC.
While I think we did pretty well, it’s nothing compared to what woman received from United Airlines for getting bumped.
Allison Preiss bought the last seat on a flight from Washington DC’s Dulles Airport to Austin after the flight she initially booked was cancelled. She was heading off to attend a bachelorette weekend.
Preiss’s new flight was overbooked so United Airlines asked for volunteers to give up their seat and take a later flight.
Nobody volunteered so “United’s staff removed the customer who had paid the least amount of money for his or her ticket“, according to Fortune. Preiss seemed like the unlucky passenger or was she…?
Preiss never boarded the plane, being removed from the boarding line. This helped the airline avoid a potentially bad situation like when a doctor was dragged off of a plane last year.
At first, United Airlines offered Preiss a $2,000 voucher which she declined. (This sounded pretty fair if you ask me.) The airline then gave her a pamphlet showing what she was entitled to due to airline regulations and laws. Fortune mentions that she, “was entitled to cash in the amount of four times what she paid for the ticket, around $650 total.”
Preiss wanted the cash but United Airlines kept upping the voucher offer, eventually offering $10,000 towards future trips! They even threw in two $10 food court vouchers, too.
Considering Preiss was only entitled to $650 in cash, it’s pretty amazing that she was able to get the airline to give her a $10,000 travel voucher. Good for her!
Talk about an airline being overly generous!
Find out more from Fortune here.
How would you account for the $10,000 IRS-1099 that comes due next April? What IF it thru you into the next higher tax bracket???
Steve- I never heard of a tax form coming with an airline voucher. What if only a portion of it gets used? Does United report that or the full amount?