[Brockenstein]

All airlines do, because they have decades of passenger data to work with and can estimate how many people won't show up, how many people will take compensation, etc. They have policies in place for every contingency.

Passengers don't like the idea of overbooking. But most passengers don't really understand how the sausage is made. And they don't care when the system works for them most of the time, just that it's not perfect, so booooo.

[viraptor]

> the system works for them most of the time

That's assuming people prefer having a chance of getting bumped off a flight they booked to paying a few bucks extra and having the same chance of just not getting that ticket in the first place. For me that system never "works for me". Maybe it works for some people, but for others, there's a good reason to hate it.