Originally Posted by
pinniped
What is the distinction in WN's nomenclature? If a plane holds 137 and they sell 138 confirmed tickets, is that overbooked or overcapacity? Is "overcapacity" a term intended to cover for last-minute crew movements? e.g., they sell 137 but are willing to VDB a few to make room for crew?
In WN's operations, don't crew stay with their aircraft as it flies along a point-to-point route? It would seem like they'd have fewer issues with crew movement than a hub-spoke airline.
Whicn plane?
The plane they thought would fly at booking time or the plane that's there at the airport gate?
That's the problem. Not every plane in Southwest's fleet has
exactly the same number of seats, does it? And there's no guarantee that the plane they expected to be your plane is the one that's actually going to be there at the gate.
Because Southwest doesn't assign seats, most people don't know
exactly which plane they're supposed to be on. At other airlines, I'm very aware of which exact configuration of the plane I' booked on, months ahead, because I see a seat map when booking at other airlines (and when reviewing my reservation).
But just because Southwest doesn't make it obvious by publishing seat maps doesn't mean that Southwest doesn't fly different planes with different configurations. And thus it's not obvious to the average Southwest flyer if a slightly smaller plane has been substituted at a late stage unless it causes over-capacity and the ramifications there-of.
Yes, I realize Southwest is an all-737 airline. But so is [pre-merger] Alaska, and with Alaska I know ahead of time whether it's a 737-900 or -800 or whatever that I'm scheduled to fly on, if it's a distinction that affect seat maps.
And, btw, yes, there are last-minute plane-type substitutions at other airlines sometimes too, but there it's much more obvious, because suddenly lots of people lose their assignment and have to get new seats assigned. So it's much more obvious there (if you're pay attention to what's happening at the gate, anyway) than it might be at Southwest where all it affects is a single count.