>>>>>Don't know if this has changed but late last year, this message was many time false. You volunteer at the kiosk then at the gate find out that the flight wasn't oversold and VDBs weren't needed.


What can happen is that the flight IS oversold at the time you are at the kiosk (everybody booked on the flight might even be checked in, and either in the airport or in the air connecting), but if incoming flights are delayed or if a passenger stands by for an earlier flight, or if someone checked in changes their mind - - the numbers suddenly change (today my MEM-MSN was oversold, but LGA-MEM and PHL-MEM feeder flights were an hour late, and a number of incoming pax misconnected).

Also, a creative gate agent can magically disperse people - - yesterday I watched as a gate agent working both a 2:05pm to CLT and the 2:40pm flight to DTW (leaving from the SAME gate), helped a couple who WERE going to connect to ROA through DTW on an oversold flight instead take the nonstop 2:05pm flight to CLT (prompted to shift in part, because they had no seat assignments on the DTW flight, and thought they may get involuntarily bumped!). The GA called down and made sure that their bag got yanked from the DTW cart and put onto the CLT flight, and they went on the earlier nonstop (to a different destination) from the same gate!

That cleared two oversells on the DTW flight, - - and then the gate agent tried to clear a third, by getting a passenger to fly nonstop to JFK instead of connecting through DTW (on the oversold flight) to HPN, but since there was no compensation for the switch she chose to keep her DTW connection to HPN instead of taking the nonstop to JFK.