It just seems like it happens so often, and airlines will sometimes offer you three times the price of the ticket just to stay a few extra hours. Seems like it’d be easy to just…stop selling tickets once the plane is full??
In: Economics
They make more money this way—they sell more tickets by overbooking a flight. That’s why they do it.
They make more money this way because some number of people will cancel or modify their flights. Usually this means everyone can be accommodated.
Sometimes their predictions are wrong, and then they have to offer people something to take a later flight. Usually this is dollars toward a future flight, which costs them less than the face value.
Basically they have done the math and even factoring that in, they come out ahead.
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