Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters
Travelers queue during the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. November 27, 2019.
- When an airline overbooks a flight, sometimes you can score an incredible deal by volunteering to give up your seat and take a later flight.
- However, in some cases, the airline will involuntarily deny boarding, bumping a passenger to a later flight. Even though you're entitled to compensation and accommodations, this can be a huge inconvenience.
- Upgraded Points recently examined the number of involuntary denied boardings by US airlines in 2018, and ranked the airlines most likely to bump you. Scroll down to see the full ranking.
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Peak travel season is officially here in the US, with the Thanksgiving holiday travel period ramping up to its peak. More than 31.6 million Americans are expected to fly during the 12-day period between November 22 and December 3.
With the busy travel period comes the possibility of overbooked flights, as airlines work to maximize capacity.
In many cases when a flight is overbooked, the airline will offer an increasing amount of compensation, and a seat on the next available flight, to find volunteers to give up their seats.
In some cases, though, an airline can't find the volunteers, which leads to a scenario called involuntary denied boarding (IDB). That's when a passenger is bumped involuntarily, and although they're legally entitled to certain compensation and accommodations, it can be an incredibly frustrating experience.
These so-called "IDBs" are rare - airlines try hard to avoid the situation, partly by offering strong incentives to volunteers on overbooked flights, but they do still happen.
The travel website Upgraded Points recently conducted a study to determine which airlines are most likely to bump passengers involuntarily. Although the results show how rare IDBs are, they also show that some airlines have a much better track record than others. (Disclosure: This reporter previously wrote and edited several freelance articles for Upgraded Points.)
Scroll down for the full results. Data are shown as the number of involuntary denied boardings per 100,000 passengers carried.