Oh, clever idea, but probably wouldn't work. First off, it's labor intensive (you have to go to the airport and check in, it's not like you can speculatively buy 500 tickets), and the amount you could potentially make is bound not only by the ticket price but by the fact that you can probably only reliably make a profit during rush times (i.e., Thanksgiving, December). Also, if you guess wrong and a popular flight did not fill up -- you have to take the flights!
>you can probably only reliably make a profit during rush times (i.e., Thanksgiving, December)
Still, it'd be a nice way to get a bolus of cash for buying, say, December holiday presents.
>Also, if you guess wrong and a popular flight did not fill up -- you have to take the flights!
You don't have to take the flights... Last I flew, there wasn't anybody forcing people to get on the plane. As long as you're willing to eat the loss (which you have to be in a speculative endeavor), you can skip boarding the first available flight and still try to win auctions on the rest of them.
I suspect the real problem with doing this is the relatively large up-front capital investment: depending on the flights, you're looking at the 100-500 dollar range per-ticket which they hold for at least a month.
