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Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, tha

• briandear 10y ago
  In that case, a missed flight should result in the passenger having to buy a brand new ticket. That doesn't happen: a missed flight is generally put on the next flight free or at a very nominal fee. Imagine the outrage if someone missed their flight by 10 minutes and they had to buy an entirely new ticket. If airlines did that, they wouldn't need to overbook though. Alternatively, instead of overbooking, the airline just doubles ticket prices.
• tyingq 10y ago
  There are full fare tickets that can be cancelled/refunded, or changed to other flights, at any time. So there's always some amount of no-shows. So they don't really "know" that they cannot honor the oversells. There's also equipment swaps to smaller aircraft, flights cancelled for mechanical issues that then moves passengers to other planes, etc. Denied boarding is actually pretty rare, happens to about 0.1% of passengers: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_64.html https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu... The other approach would be to never overbook, but if you're the only airline not overbooking, your margins will be lower. Empty seats don't make money.