In Reply to: nearly all airlines over book flights posted by clovis on Saturday, 3. November 2012 at 19:00 Bali Time:
Your calculation is a nonsence as it doesn't take into account the compensation required, or the fact that they will then have someone on the next flight that hasnt paid to be on that plane.
Put it this way. Imagine you just started your airline and your very first flight you overbook by 10 people.
The planes hold 100 people, and the airlines needs to pull in $11,000 in air fares for each flight.
So.. they sell 110 tickets at $100 each raising the required $11,000.
Marvelous. But 110 people turn up for the flight and they need to bump 10 people. In order to do this they offer the 10 customers $200 each, hotel accomodation overnight at $150 each, and a seat on the next available flight.
Suddenly the income on flight one is down by $3500, so they have only pulled in $7500.
Flight two is also down, as there will only be 90 paying customers on the plane, plus 10 who havent paid to be on that plane, so only pulling in £9000, less whatever compensation they needed to pay out to anyone bumped from that flight.
You see where I am going with this?
I refuse to believe that airlines overbook by 50%, 5% maybe.. but 50? having a laugh mate.