Why Do Airlines Overbook? (bbc.com)

From a report on BBC: A common overbooking problem on a United Airlines flight on Sunday ended with a man being bloodied and dragged from his seat and an already troubled airline earning more bad press. How did it all go so wrong? Overbooking on flights happens all the time. Empty seats cost airlines money, so they offset the number of passengers who miss flights by selling too many tickets. In this case, the problem arose because United decided at the last minute to fly four members of staff to a connection point and needed to bump four passengers to make way for them. When there's an overbooking issue the first step is to offer an inducement to the passengers to take a later flight. [...] Of the 613 million people who flew on major US carriers in 2015, 46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%.

Comments

Because it is profitable to do so

[H3lldr0p]

That's the beginning and the end of this conversation.

The only way to get airlines to stop doing it is to make it unprofitable to do so either through fines and/or regulations which increase the compensation for those bumped from flights to the point where it's not worth it to do.

Re:Because it is profitable to do so

[Luthair]

A suggestion I put in one of the other versions of this story - require airlines to get volunteers and place no limit on compensation. The issue here is that there is a power imbalance and its in the financial interest of the dominant party to take advantage of the weaker.

By removing the compensation limit and requiring volunteers we return balance to the situation and make it a free market. If it occasionally costs $20000 for someone to volunteer then airlines will be more careful about overbooking and people being bumped won't be complaining as they got an amount they're happy changing their plans for.

Numbers

[DontBeAMoran]

46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%.

It may be less than 0.008% but it's still forty six thousand human beings.

Re:Numbers

[cob666]

46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation -- less than 0.008%.

It may be less than 0.008% but it's still forty six thousand human beings.

Also, denied boarding is a whole different ball game than being physically removed from the plane after already boarding. United should have either offered more compensation until somebody took the bait or they should have bumped one of the 4 UA employees that wanted to fly. I hope the guy that was dragged from the plane has a basis to sue because what happened is not OK.

Fallacy

[Zemran]

"Empty seats cost airlines money" not if those seats are already paid for. This total BS. If the seat is paid for then less weight saves them money. Overbooking is pure greed. They know the average percentage of people who will miss the flight and they overbook to make more money but sometimes the people do not miss the flight and they do not have enough seats. It is pure greed and lies. If I have paid for a seat it should not be theirs to sell again as what they normally do is just get more strict about the check in time to reject people if they are going to have a problem. You arrive at check in a minute late (I was rejected 3 minutes late once) and they get hard arsed because they already have someone sitting in your seat. They have sold it and made money from something they had already sold to you.