What are my rights if I am denied boarding because the flight is overbooked?

Overbooking is deliberate. Airlines sell more seats than the aircraft has because a predictable proportion of passengers do not turn up, and occasionally the prediction is wrong. The rules that follow are unusually favourable to passengers, and the only thing that reliably removes them is agreeing to give them up.

Step by step

1. Understand the order the airline must follow.It has to call for volunteers to give up their seats, on terms agreed between the volunteer and the airline, before denying boarding to anybody against their will.
2. Decide deliberately whether to volunteer.Volunteering is a commercial negotiation. You can ask for more than the first offer, ask for cash rather than a voucher, ask for a confirmed seat on a specific later flight, and ask for meals, a hotel and transfers. Nothing is fixed and nothing is guaranteed.
3. Get the volunteer deal in writing before you leave the gate.A verbal promise at a gate is difficult to enforce later. Ask for the offer and the replacement booking confirmed in writing or by email before you agree.
4. Know what happens if you are bumped involuntarily.Fixed compensation becomes payable immediately, calculated by distance band and not by fare. Separately you choose between a replacement flight at the earliest opportunity, a replacement flight at a later date you choose, and a refund. Separately again, the duty of care applies while you wait: food and drink, communications, and a hotel with transfers if it is overnight.
5. Insist on the choice being yours.The airline does not get to decide that you will take the next day's flight rather than a refund, or that you will be rerouted rather than compensated. Compensation and rerouting are not alternatives — you get both.
6. Know the exceptions.No compensation is due where boarding is refused on reasonable grounds, which means health, safety, security or inadequate travel documents. Arriving after check-in has closed also removes the entitlement.
7. Claim in writing if it is not paid at the airport.Compensation is often not paid on the spot. Claim afterwards in writing with the flight details, and escalate exactly as for a delay claim if refused.

Tips

• If you volunteer, ask what happens if the replacement flight is also disrupted. A volunteer agreement rarely addresses it and it is worth pinning down.
• Downgrading is different again: if you are moved to a lower class, you are entitled to reimbursement of a proportion of the ticket price for the affected leg, set out in the rules.
• Travelling as a group, volunteering can be very good value — several passengers at once solves the airline's problem and improves your negotiating position.

Common mistakes

• Volunteering without asking what the alternative is — If the airline has enough volunteers it will never reach you, and if it does not you may be entitled to considerably more as an involuntary denial.
• Accepting a voucher on the spot as full settlement — Vouchers usually undervalue the statutory amount, and accepting one presented as settlement can complicate a later claim.

Questions people ask