BI: Philadelphia fashion photographer capitalizes on constantly oversold route, extends Italian vacation several days and makes over $3K in flight vouchers while getting free hotels and food
Let me tell you how envious I was feeling when reading this story. This girl managed to accomplish something that I’ve tried to do in the past to no success, and on a scale that I could only dream about. Having the flexibility and lack of commitments enough to where she could just say fuck it and stay in Italy for as many days as American Airlines constantly kept overselling their Naples to Philadelphia route, and volunteering to take the bump; this is the stuff that my dreams used to be made of.
I’ve actually never been able to accomplish this even once before, even at the piddly domestic level. Even if there’s been opportunities to volunteer my position for even a nominal, $300-400 flight credit, either I’ve been beaten to the punch or my flexibility wasn’t prohibitive enough for me to go for it, and I’ve always sat in terminals or on flights, fantasizing over the what-if, I could accomplish it, and get some large amounts of house money in which I could then parlay into bigger and better trips, or even some first-class accommodations instead.
One holiday a long time ago, I booked on Thanksgiving day itself, thinking that being a holiday, and before the all-important Thanksgiving Dinner time, I would be a shoe-in for a credit scenario; frankly, I didn’t want to make the trip in the first place, and I figured if there was ever a chance I would get to reach for the stars and take a shot at one of my travel fantasies, this would be the opportunity.
However, it’s apparent that the maniacal traveling is done the day before, or the Sunday before, and when it comes to Thanksgiving Day itself, fuck, I could’ve stood-by for the flight and made it on the flight, it was so desolate, but instead, I was the schmuck who paid for a full fare, thinking it would be oversold, I could forfeit my seat, get $500, and be absolved of having to travel up for a holiday.
All the times mythical wife and I have traveled internationally, we’ve always talked about what we’d do if the opportunity ever presented itself, but usually one or both of us were working too stringent of jobs to risk missing, especially since remote work never really existed for our lines of business until COVID, or we had to be cognizant of animal care, or some other reason, so we never really had a serious shot at cashing in on this ourselves.
And now that we have kids, this dream is basically non-existent anymore, unless the kids were already with other family, they weren’t burnt out yet, and were demanding that we tried for it, which I don’t imagine is going to be happening any time soon seeing as how we travel on airplanes maybe twice a year, if even that.
But yeah, I’m so jelly of this girl for what she was able to accomplish. Not that I’m particularly a fan of American Airlines, but I would gladly take their money if they were offering it up in $1,200 increments to forfeit my seat, and feed and house me. If I were in her situation, I would do the exact same thing, and be at the airport praying for another oversold notice, and be jumping up and down raising my hand to be the people to continuously volunteer to give up my seat. I can only try to not be in denial of how much I’d like to live vicariously through her freedom and independence in these circumstances, and the amount of free travel she’ll be able to eke out of $3,550.
