[jimworcs]

Overbooking is long past being justified. In the past when most tickets had some flexibility overbooking was necessary for yield management, as most airlines had no way of knowing how many would turn up and unoccupied seats lost revenue. Today, the vast majority of seats are sold on non refundable tickets, so the airline is paid whether the passenger turns up or not. Overbooking now is a greedy attempt by monopolistic airlines to get paid twice for the same service, and the disruption and inconvenience is borne by the passenger. The anger of passengers is entirely justified and frankly staff are the paid representatives of the airline. They should suck it up and take or change jobs...