Originally Posted by
jjmoore
I thought the entire point of the oversale is to fill the plane completely with revenue passengers. What we probably don't know is all the mathematics and predictive modeling that goes into estimation of how many seats over capacity the airlines can sell... aka predicting:
1) How many passengers mis-connect to that particular flight on average for that day of the week
2) How many passengers typically don't show for that particular flight on average for that day of the week (likely depends on whether it is holiday, business travel day, etc. etc.)
The airlines employ teams of operations engineers to do this kind of prediction. They have tons of data and very sophisticated methods. They consider not only the average number of misconnects and no-shows, but much more sophisticated probability models. As a result, only a very small percent of "overbooked" flights (where more tickets are sold than seats) actually result in someone being bumped, and of those who are bumped, most are voluntary. If you look around FT you will see lots of people who strategize on the best way to *get* bumped... apparently if you have the time to do it, you can get a lot of free travel that way.
So in the vast, vast, vast majority of overbooked flights, no consumer is harmed (in the sense that either nobody is bumped or the people who are bumped are willing to do so--perhaps even want to do so-- in exchange for the offered voucher). The idea that overbooking results in some kind of substantial downgrade in customer experience that would affect customers' willingness to choose that airline is not borne out by the fact that almost everyone simply chooses the cheapest ticket.