Talk:Overbooking

JetBlue
pros and cons of overbooking

JetBlue Overbooking Policy

Paragraph on Jetblue's policy should be checked. The Terms and Conditions after a recent JetBlue purchase states "NOTICE OF OVERBOOKING OF FLIGHTS While JetBlue Airways does not intentionally overbook its flights, there is still a slight chance that a seat may be overbooked, and there is a slight chance that a seat will not be available on a flight for which a person has a confirmed reservation. If the flight is overbooked, no one will be denied a seat until airline personnel first ask for volunteers willing to give up their reservation in exchange for a payment of the airline's choosing. If there are not enough volunteers JetBlue will deny boarding to other persons in accordance with its particular boarding priority. With few exceptions persons denied boarding involuntarily are entitled to compensation. The complete rules for the payment of compensation and JetBlue's boarding priorities are available at all airport ticket counters and boarding locations. Some airlines do not apply these consumer protections to travel from some foreign countries, although other consumer protections may be available. Check with your airline or your travel agent."

Conflation
This page conflates oversubscription and overbooking, two highly related, but different concepts. When reading the MPLS page and references on Frame-Relay, I was redirected here. The page for Oversubscription redirects to Overbooking, but should be a different page. The fundamental issue is that the effect of oversubscription is different from that of overbooking. In the digital world, oversubscription, like on a Frame-relay network results in all consumers receiving less than their purchased allocation. For example, if you buy 100Mbps of bandwidth from a provider, the network is oversubscribed 2:1, and everyone attempts to use their 100Mbps of bandwidth, everyone instead gets only 50Mbps of bandwidth, less than the 100Mbps they purchased.

In contrast, with overbooking, hotels or planes people do not get half a hotel room. Instead, some consumers lose and some win. It's an all or nothing proposition. Oversubscription in technology is not.

I propose this is broken out into two pages. I can take a first pass on the oversubscription page if need be.

Randybias (talk) 08:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's basically the same concept as applied in different industries. Splitting into different articles seems to have merely resulted in redundant sections, so I'm combining with overselling. -- Beland (talk) 04:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)