Can you be bumped from a flight after boarding the aircraft with no explanation from the airline? Turns out that’s exactly what happened to one bewildered Alaska Airlines passenger.
She contacted TPG, hoping we could get some answers for her. Mainly, she wanted to find out why the airline upgraded her just to boot her off the plane after she got comfortable in her first-class seat. Of course, she also wanted to know what Alaska Airlines owed her in this unique situation.
Here’s her strange story and what TPG did to help.
Booking an Alaska Airlines flight for a business trip
Christina Prescott was pleasantly surprised to be upgraded after check-in for her recent Alaska Airlines flight from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). It was her first time flying with the airline.
“I had booked the flight through American Airlines, and I assumed my status with AA had played a factor in my upgrade,” Prescott told TPG. “It was a long flight, so I was super happy to be moved to the bigger seats. I had heard such good things about Alaska Airlines and was looking forward to the experience.”
She was heading to a conference and appreciated that she could stretch out a bit in first class and do some work to prepare.
Unfortunately, her so-far pleasant experience took a rather abrupt nosedive shortly after she boarded.
Alaska Airlines: ‘Please gather your belongings and leave the aircraft’
Prescott handed her boarding pass to the gate agent and walked onto the plane. She was assigned Seat 2F on the Boeing 737-800 aircraft with a 2-2 configuration in first class.
“I stowed my carry-on above my seat and settled in,” Prescott recalled. “Everything was going great, and I closed my eyes for just a second when a flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder.”
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As most passengers would have expected, she thought the crew member intended to offer her a beverage. So she was startled to hear the following words from the Alaska Airlines flight attendant’s mouth instead: “Please gather your belongings and leave the aircraft. There is a problem with your ticket, and you can’t fly with us today.”
Prescott says she couldn’t believe what the crew member was telling her. But faced with no choice after the flight attendant made a second request, she removed her bag from the overhead bin, grabbed her purse and deplaned.
Why was I removed from the flight?
When Prescott walked off the aircraft, she assumed there would be an agent ready to explain what happened back inside the terminal. She hoped her removal from the flight was temporary. Perhaps the upgrade was a mistake and she would just get an economy seat for the flight.
Instead, an Alaska Airlines agent was closing up the gate and leaving the area.
“I asked her what happened,” Prescott says. “She told me the upgrade had somehow caused my ticket to be canceled and I should ask American Airlines for help rebooking. I asked her for a phone number, and she told me to ‘Google it’ and walked away.”
Now standing in a completely empty gate area and faced with missing her conference, Prescott quickly called American Airlines.
“American Airlines told me there was nothing wrong with my ticket. Their agent suggested that Alaska Airlines made a mistake when they upgraded me on the flight. That error must have caused my removal from the flight, but there wasn’t anything American Airlines could do for me — except book me on a new flight for an additional $1,050 for a last-minute ticket.”
Buying a pricey new ticket wasn’t something that Prescott intended to do.
Instead, since no Alaska airport agent would speak to her, she called Alaska Airlines from the empty gate area. She watched out the window as the aircraft she’d been removed from pulled away and disappeared on its way to Seattle.
A helpful Alaska Airlines phone agent comes to the rescue
After waiting on hold for a bit, Prescott says a friendly Alaska Airlines agent answered her call.
“In tears, I waited [for someone at Alaska Airlines to answer], and luckily, Heidi picked up the call. She was very helpful and agreed that my reservation was fine and that she had no idea why they took me off the plane! She apologized and helped me find another flight — but it was out of JFK later that morning. I could still get to Seattle in time for some of the day’s conference.”
As anyone from the New York area knows, transferring from EWR to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) is no simple task. In the best-case scenario, a car service or Uber can get you there in about an hour as you maneuver through some of the most high-traffic areas in the New York City area. With limited time before her new Alaska Airlines flight was scheduled to leave, Prescott called an Uber. It would cost $129 to make the 35-mile trip.
Prescott made it in time, soon boarded her new flight (in economy), and landed in Seattle five hours after her intended arrival. She had missed all the sessions of the conference she had planned to attend that day.
“It was terrible. I was very discombobulated because of everything that happened,” Prescott told me. “The experience was very awful.”
Asking Alaska Airlines for an explanation and compensation
Finally in Seattle, Prescott was able to attend the rest of her conference. At the end of the week, she headed back to the airport hoping for the best. With understandable trepidation, she boarded the return flight on her Alaska Airlines ticket and was relieved when the aircraft pushed back from the gate.
Back home after her disastrous first experience with Alaska Airlines was over, Prescott turned her attention to getting an explanation — and compensation. After all, she missed the first day of her conference and had been inconvenienced by someone’s mistake at the airline.
She emailed a polite request for compensation to Alaska Airlines and the airline soon answered.
In a strange reply that Prescott shared with me, the Alaska Airlines customer service agent admitted that she had been mistakenly removed from the aircraft. That shouldn’t have happened, he wrote. Further, when the gate agent told her she needed to talk to American Airlines about rebooking, that was an additional error.
But then he offered Prescott just $150 in future flight credits as compensation for all those mistakes. This was at a time when the last thing she could imagine doing was giving Alaska Airlines another chance.
Prescott pointed out that she had spent $129 on an Uber to take her from EWR to JFK. Additionally, she arrived five hours after her originally scheduled landing time in Seattle and missed the conference that day.
The same customer service agent responded and agreed to pay the Uber fee and increased the flight credit to $200. But that was the final offer, he relayed.
Frustrated by what she interpreted as a lack of sympathy for what she had experienced on her trip, Prescott gave up reasoning with Alaska Airlines.
“I didn’t think they were taking the situation very seriously. This was a traumatic situation. It didn’t seem right that all they would offer was to pay my Uber bill and give me some flight credit.”
That’s when Prescott reached out to TPG for help.
Asking TPG for help getting compensation for this flight bump
When I received Prescott’s plea for assistance, she was still bewildered about what had happened. Having recently read some articles on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new rules about compensation for passengers hit with cancellations or extended delays, she thought there might be something in those new rules that could help her.
However, I read through the details of her case and unfortunately did not see anything in her experience with Alaska Airlines that would apply to those new rules. They basically require an airline to provide an automatic refund for passengers whose flights are canceled. For significantly delayed flights, the airlines are required to offer passengers a swift refund if that’s what the traveler prefers.
Prescott’s situation was different, though. For reasons still unclear, her ticket had been canceled, not her flight. She had agreed to the replacement flight out of JFK and had done so without any promise of compensation. As far as Alaska Airlines was concerned, it had made up for the mistake by delivering Prescott to Seattle and back (and by paying for her Uber). It sweetened the offer by giving her the $200 flight credit, which she did not even want.
From Alaska Airlines’ perspective, Prescott’s complaint was closed.
However, I thought a case could be made that Alaska Airlines had denied boarding to Prescott, in which case, the airline actually owed her much more than a token flight credit.
What does the DOT say about involuntary denied boarding?
The Department of Transportation defines involuntary denied boarding as a situation in which a passenger arrives on time at the gate with a valid boarding pass, but the airline is unable to accommodate them on the flight because there is no space on the plane for them. In other words, the airline has overbooked the flight.
When a passenger is involuntarily denied boarding, there is specific compensation the airline owes to its customer. These cash awards are based on the length of delay in arrival at the destination.
For a domestic flight, here’s what the airline owes you if you are involuntarily denied boarding:
- If the airline can put you on the next available flight and it arrives within one hour of your original flight, there is no compensation.
- An arrival delay of one to two hours will obligate the airline to pay you 200% of the one-way fare of the ticket (not to exceed $775).
- A delay of more than two hours will result in a cash award equal to 400% of the one-way fare (not to exceed $1,500).
For international flights, the compensation for involuntary denied boarding is similar, but the length of the delays is extended:
- A delay of up to an hour leads to no compensation.
- An arrival delay of one to four hours requires the airline to pay you a 200% cash penalty based on the one-way fare (up to $775).
- Any delay of over four hours leads to a penalty of 400% of the one-way fare (up to $1,500).
Of course, the devil is in the details and some loopholes can absolve airlines from paying compensation for denied boarding. Also, remember that if you voluntarily give up your seat on a flight, the above compensation rules do not apply.
In Prescott’s case, it was unclear what had caused her upgrade and then removal from the flight. Clearly, she had had a valid boarding pass when she stepped onto the aircraft. After all, they let her board.
It is nearly unheard of for an airline to remove a passenger after they’ve settled into their seat. But she had been ejected from her flight nonetheless, with no explanation or help changing her flight, and arrived five hours late to her destination.
It was time to ask our executive contacts at Alaska Airlines what they made of Prescott’s case.
Asking Alaska Airlines why it had removed this passenger
Prescott’s strange experience did not fit neatly into an involuntary denied boarding situation because it was still unclear why she was removed from the plane.
If she was asked to leave to make room for another passenger, that would fulfill all the requirements for compensation at the rate of 400% of her one-way fare.
However, would Alaska Airlines agree that how its team members had treated Prescott qualified as an involuntary denied boarding? Either way, there was no denying that the airline had refused to transport her to Seattle after scanning her boarding pass and allowing her to board as usual. Even if this were not a traditional case of denied boarding, the end result was the same.
I sent the details to our executive resolution contacts at Alaska Airlines to see if they agreed. This is a team that I can escalate a case to as a consumer advocate and media member — they are not customer-facing representatives.
Prescott had been waiting for an explanation, a real apology and compensation for weeks. She’d written and spoken to dozens of Alaska Airlines agents by the time she reached out to TPG for help.
Her wait was about to end.
The good news from Alaska Airlines
There was finally (mostly) good news on the horizon for Prescott.
But first, the bad news: Alaska Airlines disagreed with me that Prescott had been involuntarily denied boarding according to the DOT’s definition. Its team told me that overbooking was not why Prescott was ejected from the flight. So, in the team’s opinion, the airline did not owe Prescott compensation for involuntary denied boarding. They did not elaborate on why she had been upgraded, only that she had been denied transport to Seattle and ushered off the plane in front of the other passengers.
However, the Alaska Airlines executive team did agree that it owed Prescott additional compensation for her unpleasant experience — cash compensation.
Ultimately, Alaska Airlines refunded Prescott’s entire $597 round-trip ticket and the $129 Uber fare. She also got to keep the $200 future flight credit, which will remain valid for the next year in case she is willing to give the airline another try.
Prescott is satisfied with the outcome and is considering flying Alaska again. Next time, though, she says she won’t be accepting any surprise upgrades. She’ll just keep the seat she booked, thank you very much!
What to do if you suspect you’re being involuntarily denied boarding
The good news for all airline passengers is that involuntary denied boarding is not something that regularly happens. In fact, it is quite rare. But airlines do routinely oversell flights knowing that typically a percentage of the total passengers booked will not ultimately take the trip. Unfortunately, from time to time that gamble is lost by the airline and it is necessary for some passengers to be off-loaded.
Here’s how to recognize an involuntary denied boarding situation and what to do if it happens to you.
Is the airline offering compensation for people to get off the plane?
The first sign that your flight is overbooked and the airline doesn’t have enough seats for everyone is either a message via the airline app or an announcement at the gate for volunteers to leave the flight. You might notice the compensation offer (which almost always will be in airline vouchers) will increase as time goes on without a sufficient number of volunteers.
Were you one of the last to check in?
Unfortunately, the next step is for the airline to pick a number of passengers to keep off the flight. There is some mystery around how these customers are selected, but most airlines say that it is done on a who-checked-in-last basis. So if you were late checking in, or if you failed to get a seat assignment on your boarding pass (often a sign of an oversold flight), you are a potential target.
What happens if you’re bumped from the flight?
If you are called to the counter after no volunteers have agreed to leave the flight and an airline representative tells you that you have been bumped, you should also immediately be informed of your passenger rights. First, the airline should reaccommodate you on the next available flight. Depending on your new arrival time, you should also be informed of the compensation the airline will give you according to the DOT’s rules for involuntary denied boarding. If the next available flight is not until the next day, you should be given a hotel and food voucher.
That’s what should happen. But that is not always what does happen.
Ask for involuntary denied boarding compensation
Sometimes, airlines may attempt to dodge paying the compensation by neglecting to call the situation what it is — namely, involuntary denied boarding.
However, if you observe the gate agents attempting unsuccessfully to get volunteers to leave the flight, and then you are told there is no longer a seat for you, you can assume you have been involuntarily denied boarding.
Let the agents know you are familiar with the rules about involuntary denied boarding and that you expect to be compensated at the rate set by the DOT. Polite passengers who are able to identify this type of situation and ask for what the airline owes them typically will not have a problem receiving the required compensation.
The bottom line
It’s unclear how the Department of Transportation would view what happened to Prescott. Had she not been satisfied with the offer of a full refund from Alaska Airlines, her next step would be to file a complaint with the DOT. That’s what you can do, too, if you believe you’ve been involuntarily denied boarding a flight and the airline refuses to consider your request for the required compensation.
Of course, you can also send your request for help to TPG at [email protected] , and I’ll be happy to investigate and, hopefully, help you, too.
