Woman Bilks Trip Delay Coverage For $423,000 With 900 Claims In Four Years - View from the Wing

I know several frequent flyers, and several readers of this blog, who used to "play the bump game." They'd buy airline tickets for flights they expected to be oversold, with the purpose of showing up and volunteering to take a different flight (or just cancel the trip!) and get a voucher for future travel.

When I was just out of college I used to fly back from Rochester to DC at least once a month, and in the winter the United Express Jetstream 32 turboprop operated by Atlantic Coast Airlines would go out weight restricted every time. They'd sell 17 or 18 of the seats on Sunday evening, but could only take 15 passengers. As a Mileage Plus elite I was at the top of the list when I'd volunteer, and fund my next trip by waiting until Monday morning to fly home and go straight into work.

This became even more lucrative post-David Dao as airlines upped compensation amounts to avoid involuntary denied boardings. However airlines also got better at avoiding being in that situation in the first place.

A similar tactic is to book flights that you expect to be delayed, and buy the travel insurance to get a payout for the delay. That's how one scam worked in China where insurance policies generally just paid a flat amount if your flight was delayed. Although they've tightened up the terms recently to now,

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• Require you to actually take the flight to qualify for a payout
  
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• Exclude paying benefits when you clearly knew there would be a delay when you purchased the insurance

One woman reportedly pocketed $423,000 making bookings during bad weather events, choosing flights that had histories of delays. She'd buy the insurance and pocket the payouts. And she scaled this by not just booking her own travel, but booking in the names of family members as well.

The 45-year-old woman, surnamed Li, booked hundreds of flights from 2015 to 2019. She had no intention of actually taking these trips. Instead, her only goal was to purchase flight delay insurance to turn the flight into a money-making opportunity.

Before buying the insurance, Li would analyze local weather conditions and online reviews to judge which flights would be most likely to be delayed or canceled.

In this way, she booked over 900 flights in those five years, using her name as well as the names of her friends and family members and made a whopping 3 million yuan ($423,000) in the process.

Credit: Nanjing Police

On Wednesday she was arresed in Nanjing for fraud. Although it's not clear to me that she violated the terms of any policy she purchased. And indeed this scam seems quite common for mainland China as well.

(HT: One Mile at a Time)