Airlines offering vouchers for you to give up your seat. Why? How does the pricing scheme work?
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Airlines hate to have empty seats, but they know that some percentage of people booked on a flight won’t show up, or will reschedule, so they oversell most flights. Once in a while, this causes problems because more people show up with a ticket than will fit on the plane. Federal law requires the airline to pay cash (two times to four times the value of the ticket, depending on the length of the delay) to any checked-in passenger with a ticket who is denied boarding.
The airline would rather not do this, so instead they offer vouchers to volunteers who will give up their seats. The airline would rather give you a voucher you have to spend on their airline than cash you could spend someplace else. They also almost always start by offering vouchers worth less than the amount of cash they’d have to pay out if they don’t get a volunteer and have to bump someone involuntarily.
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