In Reply to: BOB BALI posted by travella on Monday, 27. June 2005 at 13:41 Bali Time:
Overbooking is an industry wide practice. Airlines carefullly project by how much they can overbook without having to bump any or many passengers. At the gate, overbooking is dealt with in a few ways. Once check in is complete, the gate agent can see how many passengers the flight is overbooked by. Because economy class is often sold out/overbooked with seats remaining in business class, the first thing they do is move some passengers up to business...usually frequent flier elite member, high fare class passengers, or otherwise "vip" passengers get moved up first. Then, if they are still over, then they ask for volunteers, offering some compensation to the volunteers in exchange for them flying on a different flight later the same day, the next day, or on a different airline. Only as a last resort are any passengers denied boarding, and if that happens, there is compensation for that too.
We actually look for bumps and intentionally book flights that tend to be overbooked. Our best bump was from Detroit to Osaka a couple of years ago. We volunteered, (the 3 of us), were given $750.00 US each for use in purchasing a future flight in the form of a coupon (which we used), put on a flight departing 20 minutes later via Seattle to Tokyo to Osaka, all in business/first class. We had originally paid $800.00 US for the econ class tickets. Not a bad deal at all. On some other flights, we have been bumped up to business class for free.
I wouldn't worry a bit about overbooking. I would certainly consider asking what they are offering volunteers...could be you end up with some great compensation for minimal inconvenience.