i thought Boraxo was trying to say that the counter will start giving away preassigned seats and off-load those who havent shown up and IDB them.

From past experience over a # of carriers at TLV, if you vol they will take your BP and ask you to hang out and wait. They will not check-in your bag and will wait till T-? till they start to actually take the vols. eg this mornings UA 84 was soldout in Y (oversold I understood) with 2 in Biz available. They ended up taking 4 SBYs and there were 4 emptys besides that in coach and 3 empty in Biz. This is normal for UA in TLV

Im not gonna say they wont ever IDB anyone, but they usually have more then enough VDBs and turn down many as they have enough to cover themselves should everyone actually show up.

also for European carriers they offer a non-stop to those who were connecting at the hub, eg AZ TLV-FCO-LHR, they would put those heading to LHR onto BA or LY and they were thrilled even thou they received nothing more. I was turned down since I was connecting to JFK and was told they doubt theyd need me but would call me if they did and they were correct, they had more then enough people who jumped at being to fly non-stop instead

I cant speak for LY but almost every carrier Ive flown if you VDB it will be handled at the check-in counter not at the gate.Once you give in your bag say gby to any VDB chance