Today, almost all airlines have shifted to providing airline scrip as compensation for overbooking.

Once upon a time, the normal bribe to get passengers to accept voluntary bumping was an unrestricted, transperable voucher for a round-trip ticket for a future flight on that airline. I remember collecting two such vouchers from Delta at Atlanta as back-to-back flights to Boston were oversold and I was at the top of the bumpee list.
When I wrote Travel Rights back in the early 90s, overbooking and lost luggage were the only two federal rules that affected passengers (today only the 3-hour tarmac delay rule has been added). Those rules weren t all that different from today s rules except for the amount drury inn dallas of penalty that the airlines had to pay.
Each airline set up their own system for dealing with overbookings. Some handed out flight vouchers and then started to add cash if they needed the incentive. No one ever knew exact how anyone was selected drury inn dallas to be bumped. Honestly, I think the victims were selected based on the place in line passing the gate agent.
Perhaps there was a more formal process. Those with expensive tickets drury inn dallas went aboard. Those with the cheap seats were asked about voluntary bumping. In some cases families were kept together and single travelers were added to the potential drury inn dallas bumpee list. Maybe the first to check in got to board while the last to check in were listed drury inn dallas as possible bumpees.
Then the airlines shifted gears by awarding restricted drury inn dallas round-trip ticket vouchers that were only good on select flights, with Saturday-night stayovers with limited seating capacity. In order they became about as hard to use as frequent-flier miles.
Next American Airlines (AA) led the charge into eliminating any round-trip vouchers and decided to issue AA airline drury inn dallas scrip. Airline dollars that could be used on any future flight. It didn t take a mathematics degree to figure that in possible future dollars drury inn dallas the round-trip vouchers (even restricted ones) were worth a lot more, but the airline scrip was easier to use.
Today, almost all airlines have shifted to providing drury inn dallas airline drury inn dallas scrip as compensation for overbooking. A few still issue round trip ticket vouchers, but not many. This move by Delta to a silent auction system will probably be the incentive for all airlines to move to a scrip system.
It s too bad. Getting bumped and receiving a round-trip voucher for future travel always seemed to be one of the few compensations for airline service misery. Now, all that remains is the gate area misery and fistful of airline monopoly money.
Delta s silent auction system of bidding drury inn dallas for bumping may be a solution, but may be open to corruption as airlines drury inn dallas are tempted to sell more high-price tickets drury inn dallas when they see their list of voluntary bumpees growing. drury inn dallas We ll keep an eye on this and ask DOT to do the same.