Travel Deal of the Day (November 19, 2007)

If you are looking for a free roundtrip ticket by getting bumped off of an overbooked flight, this is certainly one of the best weeks to find such a deal.

The Deal:
When airlines overbook flights, they will solicit for passengers that are willing to volunteer their seats in exchange for a ticket on a later flight and some sort of voucher valid for future travel. Thanksgiving week is a heavily traveled week, and airlines are very unwilling to fly with empty seats during such a high demand weak when passengers are willing to pay very high fares for each empty seat. During such a week, there are quite a few opportunities to exchange your ticket for a free travel voucher.

Such vouchers often come in two forms:
(1) voucher valid for a free (capacity-controlled) ticket or
(2) dollar-value voucher (valid for a certain amount off of normal airfares on that airline).

The benefit of option one is that you do not have to watch airfares. Instead, if the airline has allocated at least on seat one your selected flight as eligible for purchase using the free ticket voucher, you can use your voucher for that flight. The drawback for this option is that you must search for such flights. This can be a difficult exercise as flights are quite full so few seats are available using these vouchers. Blackout dates can also create a problem. You also earn no frequent flyer miles when using such free ticket vouchers.

The benefit of option two is that you can use the dollar-off voucher on any fare. You earn frequent flyer miles on the ticket purchased using a dollar-off voucher. The drawback is that dollar-off vouchers require that you watch airfares as you are essentially purchasing an airfare and discounting that airfare by the amount of the voucher.