Originally Posted by
chornedsnorkack
Suppose that you know long in advance you will really need to fly at a specific time, and buy the ticket at, say, $2000 because of advance purchase fare. If now before the flight anyone wishes to buy a ticket at walk-up fare, say, $2500, then the airline has every incentive to sell the ticket, overbook the flight, and involuntarily bump you. Right? As soon as the price difference between advance purchase ticket and walk-up fare exceeds the denied boarding compensation, you would be liable to find at the airport that all you get would be involuntary boarding compensation and involuntary refund.
Correct?
You need to remember that airlines also need to factor in future revenue from that pax and general reputation among time senstive customers (who tend to be your profitable ones). If I'm that pax they just bumped, my $2K might be going elsewhere forever. So they aim to get as much revenue as possible at the back. For some airlines, they could not sell 2 seats for $300 and sell one for $600, and they are ahead even with empty space at the back.
The chance of a genuine voluntary bump becoming truly p***ed off and abandoning your airline forever (possibly taking out other paxs via reputation hit) is much smaller than an involutary one. So a voluntary bump is less costly than an involuntary one all else being equal. But if volunteers don't materialize or are too costly, then you go to IDBs and live with the potential reputation hit