Why Do Airlines Sell More Tickets Than Their Capacity?

Ultimately, we bought our tickets days ago and planned everything for this flight. There’s no room on the plane, what’s the point?

Bride, Why do we have to go on the next plane even though we have a ticket? Let’s open the curtains of secrets behind it.

This unfortunate situation you are experiencing is called Overbooking.

Overbooking is the airline’s protection against cancellation of reservations, especially during times of heavy passenger traffic. It is an over-booking process to reduce the risk of losing money due to empty seats.

In other words, the airline’s actual seat capacity It sells 220 tickets instead of 200 passengers. The same situation can sometimes happen to you when making hotel reservations.

The reason for this behavior of companies is because they want to keep their profits at the maximum level is related. For this, they rely on statistics and know that not everyone who buys their ticket will come to the flight.

Due to overbooking, approximately 50,000 people every year cannot board a plane even though they have a ticket.

If we do a little calculation and out of the maximum 200 seat capacity, only Assuming that 185 people arrive for the flight, then 15 seats remain vacant.

The airline wants to sell these seats quickly to avoid losses, but It is not easy to do this in the last minutes.

Instead, airline It sells 220 seats in advance. As a result, since 15 passengers did not arrive and 205 passengers arrived, only 5 people were unhappy.

The expenses they will incur to make these 5 unhappy people happy are much less than the damage they would incur if they allowed the plane to take off with 15 empty seats.

For example, if 185 out of 220 passengers come for a flight ticket of 2000 ₺, the airline Wins 220×2000 = 440,000 ₺. If he had sold 200 tickets instead of overbooking, he would have made 200 x 2000 = 400,000.

This means a loss of 40,000 ₺. Assuming full compensation for a single passenger is ₺1000, money lost by the airline for 5 people 5×1000 = 5000 ₺. In this case, the airline makes a profit of 35,000 ₺.

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