Originally Posted by jerry crump
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.
The point I was trying to make was you can only marginally increase your chances by choosing a particular flight over another. These repositioning flights obviously skew the probabilities, but the point stands.
Originally Posted by jerry crump
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.
(actually you dont even multiply the probablility by the number of passengers, because that way you could end up with a probability of grreater than 1... but thats another story)
Anyway... That’s like saying, "ah, but you have to multiply the probability by the number of passengers in the world who are going to fly on a plane today. Whoa, it’s huge... I predict there is going to be a bump to be had somewhere in the world today!” The probability that YOU will get a bump (which is the point of this thread) remains the same.