Being bumped is the disruption both regimes take seriously, and it is the one where a passenger's own decision at the gate matters more than anything the airline did. Both schemes distinguish sharply between a passenger who was asked and agreed, and a passenger who was refused a seat against their will. The first has made a deal and is held to it. The second has a right that is fixed, immediate and, in the United Kingdom, payable on the spot.
Volunteering and being denied are two different things
Both instruments require the airline to look for volunteers first. The UK Regulation says the carrier shall first call for volunteers to surrender their reservations in exchange for benefits agreed between the passenger and the carrier; the US rule says every carrier shall request volunteers before using any other boarding priority. In both cases a volunteer has accepted a negotiated offer, whatever its size, and has stepped outside the fixed entitlement. Everyone else who is refused a seat is denied boarding involuntarily, and that is the phrase the money attaches to.
What the UK Regulation does about it, and how fast
Where boarding is denied against a passenger's will, the retained Regulation requires the carrier to compensate them immediately in accordance with the compensation article and to assist them under the re-routing and care articles as well. The word immediately is doing real work: unlike a delay claim, which is argued after the fact, this is an entitlement that crystallises at the gate. The sum is the same distance-banded figure a long delay or a late cancellation carries, quoted with its source on the United Kingdom jurisdiction page here, and the care obligations run alongside it rather than instead of it.
There is no weather defence to a bump
The extraordinary-circumstances defence in the UK Regulation is attached to cancellation and to delay. Overselling is a commercial decision the airline made about its own inventory, and no storm causes it. That makes an involuntary denied boarding the cleanest claim in the whole scheme: there is no argument about cause, only about whether you volunteered. Keep the boarding pass, the gate announcement and any written offer, because those are the documents that answer that one question.
What to do in the ninety seconds you get
The offer at the gate is a negotiation and the airline expects it to be. Before agreeing to anything, ask what you would be entitled to if you were denied boarding involuntarily; a US carrier is required to tell a passenger it solicits whether they are in danger of being bumped and what the compensation would be if they were. Ask for the offer in writing, ask what it is worth in cash rather than credit, and remember that a voucher with restrictions is worth less than its face value. If you decline and are refused a seat anyway, you have not lost the entitlement by having been asked.
Questions people ask about bumped flight compensation
What is bumped flight compensation worth in the UK?
It is the distance-banded fixed sum the retained Regulation sets, the same figure a long delay carries, and it is payable immediately at the airport. The exact bands are quoted with their source on the United Kingdom jurisdiction page of this site.
I took the voucher at the gate. Can I still claim?
Accepting the offer makes you a volunteer under both schemes, and a volunteer has taken agreed benefits rather than the fixed entitlement. That is why the offer is worth understanding before you accept it rather than after.
Does denied boarding compensation uk cover me on a flight from New York?
The retained Regulation reaches flights departing a UK airport, and flights arriving in the UK operated by a UK or EU carrier. A US carrier flying you into the UK is outside it, and the US denied-boarding rule applies at the US airport instead.
The airline said the aircraft was changed for a smaller one. Does that matter?
Under the US rules it can: the exceptions to denied-boarding compensation include an aircraft substituted for operational or safety reasons. Under the retained UK Regulation an involuntary denial of boarding carries the entitlement, and the carrier's excuse is not one of the listed escapes.