4 ms·

On this note, can someone ELI5 overbooking? Why is it so hard for these companies to just not overbook? Genuinely asking.

• lotyrin 10y ago
  No-shows. If you book at 100% you fly < 100% and that costs money.
  • jessaustin 10y ago
    Don't no-shows get charged anyway? With this policy they're making money coming and going.
    • rtkwe 10y ago
      Not if they cancel or reschedule which can be done up to about a day before in most cases without a fee. And there are very few people looking for a flight less than 24 hours before it departs so those seats would go unfilled most of the time.
• MattSteelblade 10y ago
  Simple. They overbook on purpose. There is usually a percentage of people that miss a flight, so airlines overbook to account for this trying to get every seat filled.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• pillowkusis 10y ago
  most flights don't have every single person show up. there might be, say, 2 or 3 seats unfilled even if you sell every seat on the plane. so instead, sell a couple of seats twice, and bet that not everyone will show up. if you're wrong and everyone shows up, you have to pay people extra to take another flight, but that apparently happens infrequently enough that overbooking makes money over the long term.
• ghaff 10y ago
  On any given flight, there will almost always be some people who cancel at the last minute, get delayed on their way to the airport, miss a connection, etc. From the airline's perspective, there's now an empty seat going to waste (unless there are passengers at the airport waiting for a standby seat). Therefore, airlines will often sell a few more tickets than they actually have seats for because, statistically, they expect some no-shows. But sometimes what's statistically probable doesn't actually happen.
• jwong_ 10y ago
  It's hard for them because they make much more money overbooking since XX% of people don't show up for their flight. They make money on change fees/no-shows since they sold more tickets.
• bluGill 10y ago
  The airlines know that a small number of people will not make their flight. If they plan the overbooking correctly they can fill the plane with happy passengers, some of whom wouldn't have got a ticket, and make it right for the the people who missed their plane (let them on a different flight that wouldn't be full). If they sold tickets up to the plane is full, no more: they would have to charge people for missing their flight since the seat left without them. While that might be legal (and moral?) it isn't something people like to happen to them, so the airlines sell just a little over so that they can tell the guy who missed his flight, "sorry, but you can use your ticket on the next flight so you are only out your time." In short overbooking when it works right is a way to earn some goodwill from people who make a mistake.
• apparissus 10y ago
  A non-zero percentage of passengers usually fail to show up for any given flight. It is more profitable for the airline to sell (e.g.) 110% of the seats available and get near 100% utilization out of the flight, while occasionally having to pay for a hotel room and a cheap voucher, as opposed to not overbooking. When a business is acting in an abhorent, immoral, or unethical manner profit and greed are nearly always the fundamental reasons.
  • chrisbennet 10y ago
    How does this work? I mean, do the customers who fail to show, still pay for their flight?
    • dagw 10y ago
      do the customers who fail to show, still pay for their flight? Depends on the ticket. For lower price tickets, generally speaking you don't get anything if you miss your flight. For Business and First class tickets you can generally re-book or get the ticket refunded if you miss your flight. There are also some insurance policies you can get which will refund at least most of your ticket if you miss your flight due to medical or family emergencies.
• goodcanadian 10y ago
  A certain percentage of passengers just don't show up for whatever reason. This percentage is fairly predictable, so if the airline sells more seats than there are on the airplane, the extra tickets are pure profit. Because they are good at their statistics, usually, it isn't a problem, but every once in a while more people show up with tickets than there are seats. There are other reasons that this can happen. An aircraft change (due to maintenance issues, for example) might result in fewer seats being available. In this case, the airline needed to relocate some employees and seats weren't available. For the record, I believe they handled it very badly.
• martinald 10y ago
  TBH this seems to be a more legacy airlines thing. I've never seen EasyJet or Ryanair overbook flights (and they operate at WAY higher load factors that legacy airlines - Ryanair is up to 97% load factor on average). Edit: looks like Ryanair actually doesn't overbook. "Ryanair is the only airline in Europe that does not overbook its flights; therefore Ryanair has eliminated the possibility of passengers being denied boarding due to overbooking."