Originally Posted by
expert7700
As i've said before, I think COS who are forced to buy an extra seat should pay full price then a refund should be issued to EVERYONE, based on a % of the time the flights went out full/oversold versus going out with 1+ seat remaining. That way Joe Schmoe who flies once every 5 years and buys a $600 round trip can't have a negative Southwest Experience--by getting "unlucky" due to passenger loads and have to spend $1200.00. He instead buys his original $300 each way ticket, plus a $300 each way second ticket, and THEN gets two refunds check for say $285.00 each--95% of his second seat fares. Why would Southwest have to charge this at all? if they didn't make people front the $$, people would abuse the policy, bulk up even more, hide pillows, etc in order to get the coveted second seat for $15 a person.
A drawback I see with your scheme is that under the current scheme, a COS can intentionally avoid flights that are likely to be full (and it's really easy to know which those are, by looking at fare bucket availability on the Southwest web site). They can thus guarantee themselves with 99.999999% certainty that they will get 100% of their money back. Under your scheme, the shrewd COS has to pay for the non-shrewd COSes.