PHOTO: TravelPulse founder and CEO Mark Murphy on Your World with Neil Cavuto. (photo courtesy of travAlliancemedia)

Several of the United States’ largest airlines testified before the U.S. congress Tuesday in an effort to make amends for several high-profile customer service fiascos of late. But congress wasn’t making it easy.

“If airlines don't get their act together, we are going to act.” chairman Bill Shuster said. “Seize this opportunity because if you don't, we're going to come, and you're not going to like it.”

The thought of U.S. Congress getting involved in the running of that nation’s airlines sent a chill down the spine of the aviation industry, which was exacerbated when at one point, California U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter said to United Airlines’ CEO Oscar Munoz, “I guess my first question I was going to ask, only slightly in jest, is ‘Why do you hate the American people?’ but I'm not going to ask that.” Hmmmmm, too late.

The airlines are sitting before congress after a series of highly-public customer service situations, starting with a passenger being forcibly removed by Airport Police from a full United Airlines flight, stirred an intense conversation that eventually led to the U.S. Congress getting involved.

On Tuesday, travAlliancemedia president and CEO Mark Murphy, appeared as an industry expert on Fox News' "Your World with Neil Cavuto" to explain how the industry actually benefits from overbooking.

"If you actually look at the numbers they are huge for the airlines," said Murphy.

"The airlines know city pairs, they know dates, times and they know what the show-up rate is going to be. If they overbook by three, four, five or six seats, on average they're going to nail that perfectly with those algorithms," he added. "That translates into let's say $1,000 per flight extra times the number of flights in a day, 24,000. That's $24 million per day in revenue to the airline."

"Why would an airline give up that revenue when only 111 people a day get bumped involuntarily versus 2.2 million travellers?"

When commentator Dr. Wendy Osefo referred to the recent situations as "a systemic issue", Murphy responded by saying "...to me, when somebody says 'systemic' and we're talking about 2.2 million people flying every single day, and then they're saying 'yeah, hey, I'm the govt and I'm here to help.  Please.  Really?  The government can't get out of its own way, and now they want to go in and tell the airlines how to run.

You can view Murphy's appearance on Your World with Neil Cavuto in its entirety below: