Overbooking is how airlines ensure that there are no available seats when a flight departs. So they sell more tickets in advance than there are seats on the plane. The point of all this is to ensure that the plane is full when it takes off, because empty seats are a financial burden for airlines.
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The reported reason why airlines routinely oversell their seats is to recover costs the airline incurs for seat cancellations and for travelers who do not show up to take the flight. (On any given flight, some number of previously allocated seats go empty just before departure.)
Some airlines simply sell enough tickets to fill every seat. Although this practice significantly reduces the chances that a passenger will be bumped, the airline may still bump passengers in rare circumstances - such as when the seat is needed for a Federal Air Marshall.
Today, airlines have learned to predict capacity with mathematical accuracy, so empty seats are scarce and there's rarely a need to sell off unsold tickets on the cheap. Websites supposedly devoted to last-minute travel still exist, but they're really just using the same system that every other booking engine uses.
Many may also wonder how last minute we're talking, when it comes to airlines releasing additional award space. Usually space is released within a couple of weeks of departure, though the exact details do vary by airline. Sometimes airlines even release space a day before departure, or even the day of departure.
Emphatically, no. You will likely get assigned a seat during check-in (though you should still skip it if the airline tries to tack on a fee) or, at the very least, at the gate. Again: You don't have to select a seat in order to get a seat. You just might get stuck with a suboptimal one if you choose to skip it.
Specifically, plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date. Instead, flights tend to be the most inexpensive when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date.
More seats tend to fill the closer to the departure date. As more tickets sell for any given flight, the demand increases creating a jump in ticket prices. Sometimes for less popular destinations or if there is an unusually large amount of cancelations, prices may drop for flights in order to fill the seats.
Passengers may be able to sue if the airline fails to compensate them for rescheduling and delays caused by its overbooking practices. In other cases, a passenger might be able to sue for discrimination if the airline rescheduled them due to their race, religion, or another protected trait.
Moreover, every airline in the United States overbooks its flights at least some of the time. All but one, that is. JetBlue Airways (JBLU 2.70%) is the one holdout that chooses not to overbook its flights -- to be more customer-friendly.
Sometimes, when an airline asks for volunteers to give up their seats and fly on a different flight, there are not enough volunteers. When this occurs, the airline will select passengers to give up their seats. This is called “involuntary denied boarding” or “bumping.”
More often, you'll need to be a pretty spontaneous traveler to catch these deals – seats are usually only bookable for travel in the next few weeks, if not days. Many airlines follow this pattern, hoping to fill up some seats that might otherwise fly empty.
Passengers can inquire about overbooking by contacting their respective airlines or using apps that show available seats per cabin. If your flight is overbooked, airlines will usually ask for volunteers to give up their seats and offer compensation in return.
If you were not able to make an advance seat assignment, keep an eye on the seat map as these seats will begin to open up once check-in begins and then once the gate opens for the flight. If you see a note to see the agent on your boarding pass, you may be in luck.
Yes, buying multiple seats for your convenience is something many airlines offer. Each has its own process to insure you get seats that are together and are properly flagged so that they don't appear as no-show seats that can be filled by standby passengers. Pricing also varies by airline.
Airlines are pretty clear about how early you should get to the airport: anywhere from 90 minutes to four hours before your departing flight, depending on where you're going.