Okay, Jim. Let's play Jim owns an airline. You have one aircraft that makes 6 trips a day. After several years of flying that same aircraft at the same times of day on the same route you have historical data to support that on average 10 people are a no-show for every single flight. Are you really going to fly the plane with an average of 10 empty seats per trip? To do so you would have to make fares non-changeable, or if they were changeable charge a hefty penalty to do so since you lost revenue on the original ticketed flight. Either that or raise the fares for everyone else who did show up to make up the revenue on the empty seats from the no-shows. Or simply take your chances and trust your historical data and allow each flight to be overbooked by 10 seats knowing that 10 people probably won't show up or cancel at the last-minute.
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