FA's Misusing the Term "Full Flight"
 

Over the past year I've noticed that the term "full flight" is completely misused by flight attendants on WN. Yesterday the FA's said over the PA that the flight was "completely full" and that "every seat would be taken". We left with 16 empty seats. I guess they do this to encourage people to sit down in a middle seat rather than saunter all the way to the back of the plane looking for a window or aisle seat. Still, it's kind of annoying and I will often times choose a seat futher back if I think there's a shot that the middle seat will be empty (obviously there's no point if the flight is "completely full".) My completely anecdotal experience is the following:

Full Flight = up to 20-25% of the seats are empty
Completely(!) Full Flight = up to 20-25 seats are empty

When they start saying that, I stash my rollaboard in the first available spot. I think it backfires on them to some extent.

It's possible that their paperwork shows the flight as completely booked but throughout the day there are cancellations, misconnects, and whatever else at least in some of the cases. I've often spotted a paper tacked up in the galley that shows their day's routing and there have been times where the flight I was on is shown as being fully booked but it goes out with open seats. I'm assuming they print this off at the start of their day and that it doesn't necessarily get updated as the day goes on.

Similarly I've had flights that show as completely sold out when I check the night before still go out with empty seats.

Isn't this desired during a 15-min turn?

This is most often the case. We receive a new info sheet at every station but the numbers reflect bookings and can be wildly inaccurate for the reasons you mentioned.

There are always no SHOW, and many time the flight is over sold..

I have stood outside letting my seat be sold, only later to be told they do not need it.

Simply a tactic to speed up the boarding process. Otherwise everyone would try and "save" the middle seat leaving later groups struggling to find an open seat.

On the flip side, I have had the rare flight where the FA say "plenty of open seats, spread out all ya want!"

I fly on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons once or twice a month; I hear it fairly often on those days.

As few said, many flights are sold out and then people no show, cancel, misconnect, NR don't show up, etc. They very well could think the plan is full and then people just dont make it on.

On the opposite token, there are always flights that were set to have a bunch or some seats open and they go out completely full!

AA, DL, UA all do this too. Many flights are not actually booked full but are filled with nonrevs.

Nobody listens to these announcements. I've had FAs say "there are only 12 passengers on this flight so please spread out". Everyone except me "crammed" into the first 3 rows (I sat in the exit row).

if only we all could be so lucky...

I hate it when posters misuse the possessive apostrophe in an attempt to create a plural noun. :P

So your literally going to have a stroke worrying about how social media has changed the English language, accept for adding apostrophe's to plural noun's. I could care less. :D