Jewish Family Scores $11K Windfall Getting Bumped From Pre-Passover Flights

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By Daniel J. Solomon April 10, 2017

As airlines overbooked flights before Passover (and for good measure, Easter, too), one Jewish family in New York made off like bandits from the travel chaos – giving up seats on two flights in exchange for $11,000 in compensation.

Laura Begley Bloom – along with her husband and daughter – were set to fly Delta from New York to Florida last Friday morning. As the airline grappled with an overbooking problem, she and the mishpacha managed to trade their seats in for $1,350 each.

They rebooked for the next day, but then the same problem emerged. They got another $1,300 a piece, plus free lunch and taxi fare. And then, when it recurred on Sunday, Bloom canceled her family’s plans, and got another $3,000, plus a refund on the initial tickets.

Bloom was in a good place to take advantage of Delta’s overbooking situation – her family lives a short distance away from LaGuardia airport, where they were set to fly out of. And their trip to Florida wasn’t urgent.

Over at Forbes, Bloom, whose day job happens to be as a travel writer, is offering some tips and words of caution about overbooking and how to make it work to your advantage.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.