But people on the low end of the income scale generally aren't frequent fliers. To someone who gets on a plane maybe once every five or ten years, a voucher good for $800 off your next flight (on United) is pretty useless if you don't plan to fly anywhere. If the $800 was a cash offer, that might be a different story.
Noted. When this started I thought there were cash incentives. I see where fly320s said otherwise. Cash offers were something I'd never seen when I flew a lot, and for that matter, I don't recall dollar value vouchers being offered either back when I was on overbooked flights. It was always frequent flyer miles on the low end, and then just tickets "good for anywhere within X for Y time" (usually a year).
Though if you
are low income, an $800 voucher can make for a nice long weekend somewhere that you might otherwise not be able to afford. Instead of going to the local lake for the weekend, fly somewhere new and exciting.
I do recall one time United got me to LAX way late and made me miss my connection, and to make up for it, the gate agent said he would "bump me to first class for the next available flight". The next available flight was a Brasilia.
