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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Airlines know that last minute cancelations and missed connections are a common and issue for passengers, and don’t want to miss out on revenue from unsold seats.
There’s also the occasional issue where the airlines’ own operational needs can complicate issues: for example, if a weather delay causes staff at a regional airport puts crew members over their maximum allowable hours, sometimes the only solution is for a replacement crew to be carried on the next flight to that airport. This sometimes might require a passenger giving up their spot
Airlines have mountains of data about ticket sales versus flights. They know that some small percentage of people who book a ticket will either cancel after or simply not show up, maybe because of an emergency or plans changed or whatever. Airlines also want to make the maximum amount of money per flight – having empty seats is costing them money considering that plane will be taking off regardless of the number of people onboard, burning fuel, and accumulating wear and tear (barring bad weather or last minute maintenance issue).
So they book a few more passengers than the plane can hold, betting that once the people who cancel are taken into account, they will have a full plane. Sometimes though, this doesn’t work out, everyone actually does show up. Then they have to find room on other flights.
There are always going to be some passengers who don’t show up for the flight, so airlines figure that 99% of the time they can safely oversell one or two or three or something like that – tickets, so that there won’t be empty seat on fight that costs many thousands of dollars. Occasionally they miss.
Sadly it’s a fact that people sometimes don’t show for up a flight. They have a ticket, but they just don’t show up.
But also, the cost of the flight itself – fuel, aircraft wear and tear, airport fees – doesn’t really change much per passenger either. Yeah the plane is a bit heavier, but the fuel economy change is downright tiny.
So financially, it’s in the airline’s best interest to fill up the plane with paying passengers as each empty seat represents lost income.
And they’ve decided they’d rather sell an extra few tickets hoping that the no-shows will bring the passenger count to something that works, thus having the few extra passengers on board paying for their flight. Dealing with irate customers when it happens is a cost of doing business, but one they’ve decided to accept.
Airlines need to make money, and there’s a lot of competition and pressure to lower prices.
So what do they do if they have a flight with, say, 200 seats?
Try to sell 200 tickets? That’s a good start, but if you do that you quickly discover that there are almost *always* empty seats. There will be last-minute no-shows and cancellations and so on, so even if you sold 200 tickets you might end up flying with only 190 passengers.
But if you end up flying with 10 empty seats then why not try to sell an additional 10 tickets? That would make you more money, and if forced by pressure from the competition, you can now afford to drop your prices.
Sure, sometimes too many people actually show up and then you need to bump someone and compensate them. But if that happens rarely enough, it’s still a net win for your airline.
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.
I studied hotel management, they do it as well. It’s a calculated estimate of how much people will not show up so at the end you have a 100% occupation at hopefully 100%+ the revenue.
In the same way that colleges over enroll their school expecting that students will withdraw their application or not come, when it happens they are just kinda like: oops!
This is what people need to remember about businesses that have an “audience” or passengers. Airlines, hotels, movie theaters, performances. They’re selling a **time-limited** product. They’re selling seats on a *particular* flight, rooms on a *particular* night, seats for a *specific* performance. When that time has passed, that inventory is gone forever and can never be sold again. So they’re interested in maximizing the number of seats sold on *every* flight. It’s a different revenue model than, say, a stuffed animal that can sit for weeks on the shelf of Wal-Mart and sell when it sells.
Several reasons.
1. People late-cancel or no-show flights all the time. On many routes, Airlines intentionally oversell by a couple of seats. If no one cancels or no-shows, they end up in a bind.
2. If a flight gets canceled, passengers need to be rerouted. Many times, an airline would like to prioritize their first class or frequent flyers, so they announce an ovesell and offer cash for some peasant (/s) to take a later flight.
3. If the airline needs to move a flight crew from one hub to another, so that a later flight can depart on time, they may bump passengers.
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