JetRed Airways flies several daily flights from Philadelphia to Chicago. Based on historical data, the flight on Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving is always sold-out. However, there are usually no-shows so the airline decides to improve revenues by overbooking. The no-shows are Poisson-distributed with mean 8 and the airline estimates that the cost of bumping a passenger is about 10 times more than ticket price.
How many seats should JetRed overbook?