Overbooking is outrageous and ought to be illegal. Years ago, before e-tickets, most fares were refundable and airlines never knew who was ticketed and who wasn't. Some passengers made multiple reservations on multiple flights and either never bought a ticket, or only had one ticket so they would pick and choose which reservation they would actually use. Empty seats cost the airline money.
Today, virtually all tickets are e-tickets so airlines know exactly who is ticketed and who isn't. I would say 99.9% of the fares are not refundable. So, I don't understand the point of overbooking flights. The airline is going to get paid whether the seat is occupied or not. If they are so concerned, they should make non refundable tickets unusable for future travel instead of allowing ticket exchanges. By the time they're through paying denied boarding compensation and rerouting passengers, often on other airlines planes, it's got to cost a lot more to overbook a flight than to have 1 or 2 empty seats.
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