Both Oars In To fly or not to fly

Aug 27, 2010

Before I have the chance to write this column, it happened again. I was on my way back from Haiti. The amount started at $400 and quickly went to $500.  Still, no takers, but you could see people traveling together doing the math in their heads.  A thousand dollars is a lot of money. 

Still there were no takers. They upped it to $600. Very enticing, offers over $500 are rare; however, they were asking people to roll the travel dice in Haiti. That’s a tough one. They had to go to the max, especially since they could not promise hotel accommodations.

I considered the offer, but, it was my anniversary. I mulled over the idea of calling my wife.  At 22 years of marriage, it occurred to me that she may choose pragmatism over romanticism. No, we already had plans to meet in Atlanta for dinner. I chose romance. I decided I would keep going ahead with the trip as planned.

Inertia is one of three things that airlines have to combat when asking passengers to voluntarily give up their seat. The other two are disbelief and superstition. Of the three, inertia is by far the toughest to beat. We travelers, once in motion, like to stay in motion. After all, you are already in the airport. The dog is at the kennel. Your spouse is already home wrapped in a blanket watching American Idol and love only goes so far. It is just too much trouble to turn around.

Often the inertia has the added force of a bad visit or a tiring week of work behind it. We hear the offer of $250 and say to ourselves, “They could offer a million dollars and I am not staying another hour, let alone a day.” Of course, the offer never gets to a million dollars because there are several of us who will break ranks between $400 to $500 dollars. We all have our price—even for going back to our in-laws and being told one more time how to raise our kids.  But, the price is usually more than $250.

So, why do they start the offers at $250? They have to start the bidding somewhere.  Besides, there may be some lovebird in the crowd who is thinking, “I could get a ticket to see my girlfriend.” (Excuse the bitterness; I just can’t shake thinking my wife would have advised me to go for the $600!)
 
Generally, however, the airlines know that real travelers are going to ignore the offer until it hits at least $400, so they usually move the offer up quickly.  If nothing else, there is pride involved for us veterans. We can’t be bought for the price of a one way domestic ticket—we need the promise of an exotic trip that we will never take because we are too busy flying for work. We hold out for $400 and above plus the promise of hotel and a meal voucher.  Emphasis on the meal voucher since that is money in the hand.

Just after inertia, disbelief is the next hardest obstacle for airlines to overcome when trying to find volunteers to give up their seat on an overbooked flight.  It seems second nature to doubt that the promised flight—even if it’s only an hour later—will take off.  Somehow, even though we all trusted the airline when we booked our flight three months in advance, the offer of being booked on the next flight for $400 throws our mind into Monty Hall mode. We can’t help but think that there is a chance that we will end up with a goat instead of a seat.

(By the way, did contestants on Let’s Make a Deal get to keep the animal? That’s one of my unanswered childhood questions.)

A close, but more sinister sister to our skepticism, is superstition. This also puts upward pressure on the cost of volunteer flight jumpers. This is the silent factor. While the crowd openly mumbles about the doubt that the next flight will leave, the concern that taking the money may increase the chances of being on a really fateful flight goes unspoken. But, you can be sure that the thought “Yea, if I take this $600, with my luck, the plane will crash.” is going through even the most pragmatic of minds.

Somehow the promise of a meal voucher loses its luster if you think it may be your last.

By the way, that rendezvous I rushed back to with my wife: our hotel lost power for six hours. It would have been more romantic to have spent an hour on the phone discussing where we could go with the voucher.