That’s not how it works… airlines have a minimum load factor for a flight to be profitable, generally 75-80%. They over book with an assumption that X% of peopl

That’s not how it works… airlines have a minimum load factor for a flight to be profitable, generally 75-80%. They over book with an assumption that X% of people won’t show up based on decades of data. The hotel industry does the exact same thing. If you tell them they can’t overbook at all, their options are to either cut flights or raise prices. That also means all the discount tickets that make up that overbooking amount goes away. I guess if you’ve only ever bought full fare tickets you might only see a 30% increase, but if you’re only ever booking full fare, you aren’t the one getting bumped.