Good evening , Mr . Lee and thank you for choosing our airline . We have just discovered that this flight is overbooked . Would you like to volunteer to give up your seat ?   Overbooked ? Give up my seat ? I don ’ t understand .   From time to time we have a situation in which there are more passengers than there are seats on the aircraft . That ’ s overbooked .   I know what overbooked is , I just don ’ t understand how that could happen ?   Actually it ’ s a common practice to overbook , as passengers often don ’ t take their flight as scheduled . Most of the time there is no problem but today , more passengers arrived than we have seats ,   So who has to stay behind ?   Well , first we ask for volunteers . If someone like yourself volunteers , they receive a free round trip ticket to be used within one year . If no one volunteers we just have to select someone .   Ok . I ’ ll volunteer . I could use a free ticket ! 