​​On Christmas day 2022, Delta Air Lines had planned to operate a flight from Oakland to
Salt Lake City. One major issue on that day was that this particular flight was overbooked. To
deal with this, the airline offered three passengers $8,000 vouchers to give up their
seats on the flight. Unfortunately for David Reeves and his family members,
they never received Delta’s offer, despite volunteering to be bumped.
It’s a sad reality for passengers around the world - including in United States:
Airlines routinely overbook flights - selling more tickets than seats onboard.
While airlines want to squeeze every penny of profit possible,
travelers sometimes get the short end of the stick on the rare occasion that
every passenger shows up for the flight or makes their airport transfer on time.
So, when flights are overbooked, airlines must bump travelers to
other flights. But when this happens, carriers are required by US law to offer compensation.
All of this background takes us to December 25th of 2022.
David Reeves and his family experienced an overbooking situation for their Delta
flight departing Oakland International Airport.
Reeves' family was flying to Nashville for Christmas on a flight via Salt Lake City.
At the gate, passengers were offered an astounding
$8,000 each to give up their seats and take a later flight.
Clearly an offer that was hard to refuse, the family agreed to give up three seats
on the aircraft, meaning they would have received $24,000 in vouchers!
Tragically for the family, however, they never received their money. Why? Well, because the
first officer for the flight did not show up, and this caused the flight to be canceled.
According to ABC7, Reeves asked the gate agent if the
airline would honor the voucher offer, and is quoted as saying:
"So I did ask her, you're not honoring the vouchers that you agreed to pay
and now you're canceling the flight? …That's not right,
if we're not getting the flight and you offered the vouceher... why don't we get the voucher?"
The disappointment didn’t stop there for Reeves and his family. In addition to the
flight being canceled, Reeves' family was offered another flight only two days later.
Because the cancelation was considered quote-unquote 'controllable' by the Department of
Transportation's standards, the airline's standard compensation policies went into effect instead.
Delta's policy is to do the following in the event of a controllable cancellation:
Rebook passengers on same airline at no additional cost
Rebook on a partner airline or another airline with which
it has an agreement at no additional cost
[Provide a] Meal or meal cash/voucher when cancellation results in [a] passenger
waiting for 3 hours or more for a new flight
[Provide] Complimentary hotel accommodations for
any passenger affected by an overnight cancellation
[Provide] Complimentary ground transportation
to and from hotel for any passenger affected by an overnight cancellation.
And to make things even worse,
Reeves added that Delta did not even honor everything it promised to pay for.
The family rented a car, drove to Monterey Regional Airport,
and booked a flight on another airline. According to the family,
Delta did pay for a hotel and the rental car, but has yet to refund the flights back to Nashville.
To expect as much as $24,000 in cash or flight credit and have it disappear would be a huge
letdown for anyone. Given the circumstances, we’d love to hear from you! Is the family entitled to
receive the compensation originally offered by Delta Air Lines? Let us know in the comments.