> So you ask for volunteers and compensate. I've never experienced the process of asking passengers who wants to stay. Only finding out at the gate at the last

> So you ask for volunteers and compensate. I've never experienced the process of asking passengers who wants to stay. Only finding out at the gate at the last moment. Also seen it happened to many other travelers while I passed through - finding out their ticket won't get you through the gate - shocked, frustrated, pissed off. You seem to be an airline apologist, maybe an insider? Or you just never faced the situation described? Way too many wrong/incorrect statements in your post to cover all of those, and tons of whataboutism. But at least some: > Why don't people understand that an airline operates under different constraints than a bus company or a train operator? Why oh why... should I care? Its a public transport offering, nothing more or special. It certainly doesn't give them some extra credit so they can act amorally to maximize profits. > To always plan such that the highest possible number of pax is smaller or equal to the lowest possible number of seats available is wasteful. By your logic, we should all be transferred like a cattle, since it would be way more efficient, and who cares about treating customers with basic dignity when you can optimize, right? Bottom line - my opinion is airlines should pay extra to people they on purpose deny boarding due to overbooking compared to other causes, only because their wonderful analytical methods and systems screwed up again. In all my overbooking experiences, the compensation was too small to even cover additional expenses I had to pay to cover for the mess created by airlines. And how do you compensate stress, frustration, missed opportunities, reduced time for vacation etc on top of that? Also the process of retrieval compensation is often as complicated as possible, ie that LOT took quite a few calls to their support to send me a 'secret' link you simply can't find on their website, and it took more than 2 months to get money after filling it. It was even an EU regulation breach, but do you think anybody at airline cared? At least some other airlines were more direct. How do you apologize the fact they let you roll through check in, but send you home/to hotel only at the gate? It is really a wonderful experience, apparently you might benefit from that humiliation a bit and see things from customer's perspective.