Nowadays, overbooking is a common practice in many areas, including air travel. Such situations can occur for various reasons and depend on the actions of several stakeholders, such as the airlines themselves, customers, governments, and others. Undoubtedly, air carriers play a significant role in the overbooking strategy. They “accept the booking reservations of customers more than flight capacity in order to make up for the vacancy loss.” Ultimately, their goal is to obtain the greatest possible benefit and reduce costs in case of non-appearance of passengers or their refusal to fly the selected flight. In other words, unreliable or, as Zizka, McGunagle, and Clarkargues argue, “unpredictable” customer behavior can also cause overbooking.
As for the government, it also participates in the overbooking strategy by adopting laws and defining the rules and boundaries of mandatory boarding compensation to the customer. A U.S. Department of Transportation report states that there are four exceptions for receiving payment when a person is bumped from a flight, while the U.S. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations includes two more points to this list. Apart from that, federal institutions set the minimum and maximum sums of money that are to be paid to passengers in case of overbooking.