Originally Posted by tann1001
One of the posters in this tread appeared to have done some research from the DOT and stated that the probability of bump was <0.001 on all airlines. With thought and planning you might be able to increase this to < 0.002 but really, you can hardly call it a science.
I think you have misquoted the prior post.
Some red eyes used to reposition planes run load factors of 10 to 20% consistantly. Simply booking an average friday/sunday afternoon will do far more than double your chances of a bump or asking a gate agent which flights overbook the most may boost your odds many fold.
Also you are ignoring the fact that there are an average of 100 or so passengers on each flight so you must multiply the number of passengers on the flight by the bump statistics per passenger to determine the probability that a bump is available for the flight.