Overbooking and its bonuses
 

In the past few years I have found that when I fly EL AL if they are overbooked and you ask if they are overbooked and volunteer to be put on a later flight they will give you a free round trip ticket good for travel to Israel from anywhere in the world. Somebody just told me that you can do the same thing with BA. I am curious if how many other airlines have the deal and which ones overbook the most?

As a student I normally am in no rush to go anywhere and would gladly do this every time I fly. Last time it happened I was going from TLV-EWR and got bumped to an hour later flight on AF which had a few hour stop over in Paris... a round trip ticket on EL AL is about $1300 if you're lucky.

All airlines offer something in compensation in VDB situations. If you're flying domestically you'll get a domestic ticket or travel voucher. El Al isn't the only one that does this :D

Halothane

OP, if what you're suggesting is accurate, it might be a good way to get pretty much anywhere you want to go. It would be interesting to find out for sure.

Not sure about El Al and BA, but with most US airlines, the free trip vouchers are capacity controlled, and can be hard to use except on unpopular routes during off times.

To me, the biggest benefit of overbooking is lower fares. If airlines didn't play the statistical overbooking game, most flight would depart around 10 percent empty - which would have to be recovered by higher fares for those who fly.

That said, and having taken IDB compensation more than once, I'll go for the voucher rather than the ticket any time if given that choice. I stand a darn good chance of actually being able to use a voucher.