Is the US bumping cap $1,350 or $2,150

Is it $1,350 or $2,150 for being bumped?

It is $2,150. The figure that binds an airline sits in the oversales rule itself, not in the consumer prose around it. Read on 17 September 2026, 14 CFR 250.5 sets involuntary denied boarding compensation at 200 percent of the fare to your destination or first stopover, capped at $1,075, when the substitute flight is planned to land one to two hours late, and at 400 percent, capped at $2,150, when it lands later.

The $675 and $1,350 pair is not invented either. It sits on a live government page. DOT's Airline Consumers' Rights FAQ answers the bumping question twice, with 200 percent up to $675 and 400 percent up to $1,350, and puts the domestic baggage liability limit at $3,500. Its footer date is Tuesday, April 18, 2017.

One click away, DOT's Bumping and Oversales page gives $1,075 and $2,150. Its footer date is Friday, September 26, 2025. Same department, same rule, two answers eight years apart. On the 400 percent band they disagree by $800.

Why does DOT's own site show two different amounts?

Because the caps are indexed and the prose is not. Paragraph (e) of 14 CFR 250.5 commits DOT to review these limits every two years and raise them by the July reading of the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. The amounts in the rule move on a schedule. Any page that retypes them stays put until somebody edits it.

DOT refreshed its aviation consumer pages on 26 September 2025. The bumping page and the Fly Rights page both carry that date and both show $1,075 and $2,150. The FAQ sits in an older corner of the site and was not in that pass, so it still answers the question people are typing with the 2017 numbers.

The lesson is that the update date matters more than the domain. An official source is not automatically a current one.

What are the current caps, and which delay gets which?

Two things decide the payment, how late the airline gets you there and whether the flight was domestic or an international departure from a US airport. The percentages are identical. Only the time bands differ, since an international itinerary gets a wider window before the higher rate applies.

The percentage applies to the fare to your destination or first stopover, not the whole itinerary and not what a replacement seat costs on the day. The cap only bites when the percentage runs past it, so a cheap fare pays the percentage and an expensive one pays the cap. Zero fare award tickets count too, valued at the lowest cash price for the same class on that flight.

Five conditions have to hold first. You are departing a US airport, you hold a confirmed reservation, you checked in by the deadline, you reached the gate on time, and the airline cannot get you there within an hour of your original arrival.

Where do $775 and $1,550 come from?

They were the caps from 2021 until January 2025, and they are still the most common answer on the open web. The 2024 final rule, published at 89 FR 84815 on 24 October 2024, says in its own abstract that it raises the limits from the current figures of $775 and $1,550 to $1,075 and $2,150. It took effect 22 January 2025.

The same rule raised the domestic baggage liability limit from $3,800 to $4,700. That is why the FAQ's $3,500 is not one round out of date but two. 14 CFR 254.4 now reads $4,700 for each passenger, and the Fly Rights page carries the same number.

So a page printing $775 and $1,550 was right in 2023, and one printing $675 and $1,350 was right in 2019. Both are wrong for a bumping today, and neither lets you tell which era it belongs to, because neither shows a date. That is why our methodology records the day every figure here was read.

What do I do if the airline offers less than the cap?

Nothing in the rule asks you to haggle. The compensation is owed by default, in cash or by cheque, and the airline has to offer it at the airport on the same day. If the substitute flight leaves before it can pay you, it has 24 hours from the incident.

Volunteering is a separate transaction that works the other way round. There is no ceiling on what an airline may offer a volunteer and no floor either, so the first number at the gate is an opening bid. Accept it and you are a volunteer rather than a bumped passenger, and the caps above stop applying.

If you pay for a hotel or a replacement seat yourself, check what you can recover before assuming it. Compensation and reimbursement are different pots, and our travel insurance guide sets out which one a policy touches.

• Ask for the written statement. DOT requires the airline to hand every involuntarily bumped passenger written notice of their rights and of how it chose who to bump.
• Do the percentage before the cap. Double the fare to your destination or first stopover for a one to two hour delay, quadruple it for longer, then compare with $1,075 or $2,150.
• Use the airline's own clock. The band is set by your original flight's planned arrival against the planned arrival of the flight it rebooked you onto, not by how long you sat in the terminal.
• Decline a voucher unless you want one. Credit may replace cash only if it is worth at least the cash owed, the airline tells you that cash figure, and it discloses every restriction first.
• Claim the extras separately. The rule also requires a refund of unused ancillary fees, such as a seat assignment or checked bag you paid for and did not get.
• Keep the boarding pass and the notice. They are the evidence this was involuntary rather than a deal you agreed to.

When does being bumped pay nothing at all?

The cap is the headline, but the exceptions decide a large share of real cases. DOT lists six situations in which an involuntarily bumped passenger is owed nothing, whatever the fare.

The aircraft swap catches people out, because from the gate it looks identical to an oversale and pays nothing, which we cover in smaller plane, no bumping payment. The foreign departure exception reads worse than it is, since a flight leaving an EU airport falls under a different regime with amounts fixed in euros rather than tied to your fare, set out in our EU261 guide. The real gap is the other direction, covered in US airline into Europe, no EU261.

One last thing if you are insured. An airline payout is usually deducted from what a policy then pays for the same disruption, the subject of insurance deducts what the airline paid. Claim the statutory money first, then the policy for what is left.

• Aircraft change, where a smaller plane is substituted for operational or safety reasons.
• Weight and balance limits, on aircraft with 60 or fewer seats.
• Downgrading to a lower class, which gets a refund of the fare difference instead.
• Charter flights, booked for a specific trip outside the regular schedule.
• Small aircraft, meaning scheduled flights on planes holding fewer than 30 passengers.
• Flights departing a foreign location for the United States, though some carriers pay voluntarily.