It was one of those times we were traveling on a budget.

Who am I kidding—we are always traveling on a budget. On this particular trip, we bought tickets to return home on Christmas Day, when the flights are cheap and the airports are empty.

We arrived in Houston and, looking at a six-hour layover, Douglas was just over it.

“You know what?” he said to me. “I don’t want to sit here for six hours. I’m going to ask if we can get switched to an earlier flight at no cost.”

He didn’t have to add the “no cost” part, because I already knew he wasn’t going to cough up 5 bucks if it saved him a couple hours on a layover. We approached a counter for American Airlines, and Douglas asked his simple question: is there any way we could switch to an earlier flight at no cost?

The guy at the counter looked into it to see what he could do. I don’t know if it was the Christmas spirit, or just some kind of American Airlines perk we already had, but to my surprise, he was willing to work with us.

“Actually, there is an earlier flight to Seattle,” he told us. “But you’re going to have to run to the gate—they’re about to start boarding in a couple of minutes.”

“We’ll take it!” Douglas said. We got our new tickets printed out booked it to our new gate as quickly as we could. How incredible! Instead of spending six hours, we were going to spend only 6 minutes waiting for our flight. I thought that was great enough for us—who could want anything else?

We sat down at the gate and smiled at each other, happy about our success in our free, earlier departure. We were barely seated when they began making announcements for our flight.

“I’m sorry to say, but we are overbooked by two customers on this flight,” the gate agent started. “We are looking for two volunteers who will move to a later flight, at $300 per person. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

No apologies needed. No inconvenience. We didn’t even look at each other to come to agreement on our next move. We both made a mad dash for the gate agent. I can’t entirely be sure, but I think I saw Douglas shove an old lady and a child out of the way to make it first in line.

“We’ll volunteer!” we said, trying to sound a bit disappointed, and oh-so sacrificial.

“Thank you so much,” the gate agent said. “I’m so sorry we have to put you on the next flight.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem at all,” we said, looking at each other with a glimmer in our eyes.

We couldn’t believe our luck: ask for an earlier flight and be the cause of the overbooking, then receive $600 in compensation for the “inconvenience,” only to be back to our original plans. If that ain’t a Christmas gift from American Airlines, I don’t know what is.

“The next flight to Seattle leaves in two hours,” she told us.

Wait a second—there’s still another flight to Seattle that’s earlier than our first one? So we’re going to get paid and also still get in earlier? Merry Christmas, indeed!

We got to our new gate and a thought crossed our mind: could this flight possibly also be overbooked? What if we got compensated for two flights with no change in our travels whatsoever?

We strategically positioned ourselves at the seats closest to the gate and perched on the edge of our seats, waiting for the announcement.

But no announcement came. Shucks.

We boarded our early flight home, actually feeling disappointed that we were arriving home on an earlier flight.

But hey, we got $600 in flight credits, got home early to enjoy a bit of Christmas, and had a layover in Houston we won’t ever forget.