Here's how much airlines will pay you to give up your seat
... United has taken a costly public relations hit. And its stock lost $250 million in value on Tuesday.
A total of $1.15B now?
... Laura Begley Bloom and her family had a better experience last week. Delta paid them $11,000 not to fly.
Begley Bloom, her husband and her 4-year-old daughter had tickets to fly from New York to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Friday. It was the third day of the Delta weather debacle, and thousands of unhappy passengers needed to be rebooked.
So Delta was offering top dollar to anyone who would agree to give up a seat.
When the gate agent offered $900, Begley Bloom's husband offered their three seats for $1,500 each. The agent countered with an offer of $1,350 apiece -- so the family left the airport with $4,050 in vouchers and a promise that they would be put on a flight on Saturday.
Two of them were feeling pretty good about things.
"I'm not going to lie to you, my daughter cried. She was upset not to see her grandparents and cousins," Begley Bloom, a travel editor who now runs a consulting business, told CNNMoney.
"But we weren't sure that flight was ever going to leave," she said. "There were people who were at the gate who had been sleeping on the floor for days, yelling and cursing. We just wanted to get her away from there."
When the family returned to the airport on Saturday, they found the flight overbooked once again, and gate agents looking for more volunteers. They left with $3,950 more and a promise that they would be put on a flight on Sunday.
But the third day was no better. They agreed to have their tickets refunded and accept an additional $1,000 per ticket....