Within the EU, flights rarely get overbooked. Especially on cheap flights like with Ryanair, the reimbursement that the airline has to provide in case of overbooking can easily be more than 10x the ticket value.
At the extreme, if no one takes the offer, they’ll just bump some rando and you have to pray it’s not you.
Of course, nothing is done about it because it doesn’t happen enough for enough people to complain. I also bet that the airline’s systems are programmed to never choose a powerful enough person for the rando being bumped. You wouldn’t want to bump a Congressperson, right? That’d be just rude!
Seems to me this is true in pretty much every industry, yet for some reason with flights, certain folks (likely not the FFers) get very upset to realize their price sensitivity/lack of airline stickiness moved them to the back of the line.
A lot of the FFers don’t have much freedom in their booking, and are in too deep in the FF program to switch preferred airlines now.
Personally I'd rather be in this system and pay lower airfare prices than pay a premium to guarantee I'll never be bumped off my flight.
They give big discounts to people who book early and make their planning process easier.
In theory this makes the need for overbooking less necessary. If you don’t show up you’re not getting your money back anyway and the plane will use less fuel on its flight.
This from the airline that wanted to charge people for using the toilets. If overbooking was a better model I’m pretty sure they’d use it.