WestJet Rewards - Does WS plan to start overbooking flights?

WS has always prided itself in not overbooking their flights but today while searching around online happened to spy the overbooking notice in WS's flight info PDF found on every E-ticket email:

http://www.westjet.com/pdf/flightInformation_EN.pdf

Notice- overbooking of flights

If the flight is overbooked, no one will be denied a seat until airline personnel first ask for volunteers willing to give up their reservation in exchange for a payment of the airline's choosing.
If there are not enough volunteers the airline will deny boarding to other persons in accordance with its particular boarding priority. With few exceptions persons denied boarding involuntarily are entitled to compensation. The complete rules for the payment of compensation and each airline's boarding priorities are available at all airport ticket counter and boadring locations. Some airlines do not apply these consumer protections to travel to some foreign countries, although other consumer protections may be available. Check with your airline or travel agent.


BTW the overbooking notice can be found in the last paragraph on page #3. The question is whether this paragraph was slipped in as a catch-all by Sabre or whether WS will start overbooking their flights as they move toward becoming more of a schedule airline and partners with other shceduled airlines.

We don't intentionally overbook flights but it can occur sometimes.

For example, if a flight attendant falls ill and a replacement cannot be found thus the ratio of 1:40 cannot be met; or perhaps strong winds on an ETOPS route require the flight to limit the number of guests. As we will begin codesharing in the future, I can certainly see this applying to WS guests on an overbooked flight with WS code operated by another carrier.

No doubt this is here as a legal cover-all in the event that these things happen. We have just had a refresh of the WestJet careantee, some promises were tweaked to better reflect the operational/ market realities. The promise that "We will not overbook your flight" has remained and as such I can't see this changing anytime soon.

I've received voluntary denied boarding compensation on WS before.
Was scheduled to travel YYC-YVR and the inbound aircraft went mechanical. A replacement aircraft was found but it was a 737-700. We found out the flight was due to be operated by a 738 and so. And so they called volunteers at the gate.

If I recall, they gave me a westjet credit for 200% of the o/w fare I paid, put me on the next flight about 2-3hrs later and gave me a 10$ meal voucher for YYC. The whole process was painless and organized (as they were sending the volunteers to an empty gate for processing, instead of having us overcrowd the podium and aggravate the usual pre-boarding gate maelstrom)

Based on that experience, I wouldn't mind if Westjet WOULD start overbooking, as I'm sure they will never be short volunteers :)

Mind you I was lucky that I was 'stranded' in YYC, not in one of the network's outposts (KOA, NAS etc...) and this was handled by WS staff (I found their contract ground handlers in places like LAS or HNL to be quite dreadful and useless, with a very un-Westjetlike attitude)

Based on that experience, I wouldn't mind if Westjet WOULD start overbooking, as I'm sure they will never be short volunteers :)

Mind you I was lucky that I was 'stranded' in YYC, not in one of the network's outposts (KOA, NAS etc...) and this was handled by WS staff (I found their contract ground handlers in places like LAS or HNL to be quite dreadful and useless, with a very un-Westjetlike attitude)

You can bet that if it became a regular thing, they wouldn't be so generous with the offers LOL.

You can bet that if it became a regular thing, they wouldn't be so generous with the offers LOL.

I would think that if a flight was 100% sold out, and an on duty skymarshall (s) wanted a seat, they'd have to bump a revenue passenger.

:p