eli5 How and why do airline flights get oversold?

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To the point at which they need to reject passengers ? I can only think that it’s due to poor management and organisation ? Does anyone have any legitimate reason ?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A friend of mine recently got a ticket for a roundtrip he’s not gonna be on because for some reason the roundtrip ticket cost less than the one way ticket. Of course that’s not something the airline knows but it’s one of the multitude of reasons why taken seats end up empty. Airlines, being as greedy as they are, are not satisfied with simply ferrying an empty paid for seat, they want to charge for it twice. They crunch numbers on cancellations and empty seats per flight to try to predict how many overbooked seats they can get away with. They don’t always get it right but they don’t have to, they just have to get it right most of the time so that even with reimbursing a few people every now and then they’re still making profit over this scheme.

Of course they don’t really care if they fuck someone’s plans over, someone who did everything right and was not warned until last minute.

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