davidvel
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I would argue that the airports, FAA, and airlines already do exactly what you describe, "overbook" airports. Your statistics even bear this out.The GTAA (Toronto's international airport, YYZ) is privately run. Every day, between 5% and 25% of flights are cancelled for some reason. That costs the GTAA money.
Perhaps they should overbook the runways and gates using an algorithm to compensate for this loss of revenue. Then, if all the flights actually do show up, some (I would suggest focusing on airlines that overbook the most) get told "sorry, but you cannot be accommodated at this time because of runway / gate overbooking. You can either try to land later, or go to another airport." (Which also may be overbooked). The airport would give them a "voucher" though.
It may be a good business practice for airlines, but I'll bet they wouldn't like it to happen to them.
Airports, FAA, and the airlines know that there are weather issues, mechanical issues, priority (air force one) aircraft, and ATC staffing issues that will reduce airport capacity at times, and affect the number of flights that can be handled at any given airport. This is especially true during winter and thunderstorm seasons. They could just not "overbook" the airport, and reduce capacity by 10-20% just to ensure that when bad things happen all flights won't have any delays. This would cost airlines, and passengers, and airport authorities, tons of $.
Or, they can deal with these delays as they come up, like they do now.