Game Theory and the United Airlines Incident
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/13/523726313/how-game-theory-relates-to-airline-booking
The United Airlines disaster was a big spectacle this year. It was widely publicized because of the way United handled the situation. To keep seats full on planes, United overbooks flights. For example, there will be 100 open seats, and United will book 105 seats. This is exactly a game theory problem.
When you show someone something, for example a coffee mug, they may offer you $5. When you give them the coffee mug and then ask for it back, the person will want considerably more than $5. This is the same for plane seats. When you sell a passenger a ticket, they make plans around that flight and they will value the ticket at much more than the price they bought it for. A more advantageous strategy by United may use auctioning. For example, they can send a text to all passengers saying “does anyone want to give up their seat for $2000?”. This can go down based on the interest and the resulting bids. As a result, such a United PR disaster would be much less likely to happen.