Why do airlines seem to overbook flights so often, especially when they end up having to pay extra in rewards to passengers who give up their seats?

Question

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

Answer 1

FWIW not every flight is overbooked. It *seems* like it because people flying observe more full flights, because there are more people to observe it. If there are 20 flights that have 1 person on them, and one flight that’s overbooked with 100 people, most people will have an overbooked flight even if that’s not the majority of flights. A lot of flights are, in reality, far from full, it’s just that people aren’t necessarily there to observe them.