United is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time lately. Whether they’re telling little girls to change out of leggings, assaulting paying customers, or conducting nightmare flights filled with angry scorpions that crawled out of a cursed mummy’s sarcophagus, they just can’t catch a break.
And now their competitors, having caught the scent of blood oozing out of the wounded gazelle, are going in for the kill. The latest to capitalize on United’s recent bad press and customer service disaster is Delta. The airline is now giving their employees permission to offer passengers up to almost 10,000 dollars in compensation in order to give up their seats on overbooked flights.
In an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press, Delta says gate agents can offer up to $2,000 in compensation, up from a previous maximum of $800, and supervisors can offer up to $9,950, up from $1,350.
We would absolutely give up our seats for ten thousand dollars. Hell, we’d probably let someone “indecent proposal” us for four thousand dollars. It’s a smart move by the airline, and by Delta incentivizing rather than forcing ‘volunteers’, we may even feel excited the next time our flight is once again overbooked. It’s like a little lottery win every time! Now, if only we could get them to give out free champagne every time the person next to us farts, travel might actually become pleasant again.
