Overbooking and so on: some people might not know or remember, but on ancient times it was kind of 2 separated processes: buying the ticket was one thing, booki

Overbooking and so on: some people might not know or remember, but on ancient times it was kind of 2 separated processes: buying the ticket was one thing, booking a specific flight was another. You could change your initial choice of flight (perhaps paying some fee, not the whole ticket again). Doing a no-show wouldn't make you loose your ticket (perhaps you would, again, pay some fee). Even the need to check-in is a consequence of that time. Without that, things would be straightforward: buy the ticket, board the plane, loose the ticket if you don't. With the ticket being a different thing from a "reserved seat in a specific flight", you end up with overbooking (selling more tickets than the flight can handle because usually someone will loose the flight, or will change it to another day). You end up with companies that don't want to lose the last seat in exchange of a small fee (it's better to sell another full ticket, no?). Perhaps prices would go up a bit. Perhaps people would be more pissed off when they loose the flight. I don't know. I just know that it began as a model that made sense at the time, and small changes added-up so that we are in this situation, now.