LegalTender

PAX62

I love this...

nsx

How about:
Better than a kick in the head?

ryw

I could see:
"0 kicks to your head. That's transfarency."

Coming to a jetway poster near you! The crazy thing is that WN's existing transferency website - http://www.transfarency.com/#pledge - has a madlibs-like section where you could go and write:Seems almost tailor made for this...

FCfree

I would think and hope that Southwest would use the events over at United as a training example.

Letting people get on the plane, then deciding that 4 of them need to get off the plane is a pretty bad idea. Should a series of events cause Southwest ever to find themselves I that situation, I would think that continuing to offer higher and higher VDB amounts until someone volunteers would be the better way to go.

United could have offered $10,000 per person x 4 people in CASH and still have been ahead a lot of money compared to the crisis management team they need now, the 4% drop in their stock price (~$750 million, although this could be temporary) and the lost business in the future. I'm sure in retrospect, they wish they would have offered that.

Generally better customer service is another reason why I switched from UA to SWA when Southwest came to Denver years ago. There were no free upgrades back then on TED as TED had no first class and a coach seat is a coach seat.

cubachao

I believe Spirit did the same thing after United Legging incident.

I like their marketing ideas, much better than: fly the """"friendly""""" skies!!!

ursine1

Just in case anyone is unclear (as it appears many on social media are), this new "slogan" was -- of course -- not created by Southwest, but rather something done by a random person that went viral.

I suspect Southwest will use the incident as an internal teachable moment, while management remains thankful that it wasn't them.

Tanic

Fortunately, it would be difficult to replicate the YX debacle on WN. Over here, the losers would naturally be spinners who has already lost at musical chairs.

ursine1

I'm not so sure.

I've seen passengers asked to de-board after being seated on Southwest.

One hopes Southwest would be willing to offer whatever compensation it takes to get a volunteer to give up their seat before resorting to an altercation with a aggravated passenger.

But I'm not overly optimistic that's true.

Not much about the YX incident makes sense, but as we've seen with past passenger incidents on Southwest, that's generally the case.

IMHO, the incident could have happened on any carrier.

nsx

Other than volunteers and airline employees flying free, I haven't seen that. But I have seen people board a flight with all seats already occupied. (Either the count was off or a lap child was taking a seat.)

Allan38103

This is a joke, right? (Some kid in his parents' basement with a computer and a Photoshop program.)

Ha Ha

Tanic

Now that you mention it, I have seen "companions" removed from airplanes when the pass holder was not onboard. Usually hiding in shame.

OPNLguy

This is much more common at locations like MDW, DEN, and BUR (and a few others) when the variables of airport elevation (above SL), aircraft type (-300s), and the flight's duration (longer = more fuel and thus heavier takeoff) all serve to make a specific flight takeoff limited versus landing weight limited.

Situations that are landing weight limited are usually known in advance, and the temperature and elevation of the takeoff point are not usually relevant, since the restrictive items is structural landing weight at the destination. There is thus more time to get volunteers, and preclude them from boarding.

Situations that are takeoff weight limited are more commonly only known at the literal last-minute, when the temperature at the departure point jumps more than was assumed on the dispatch release, and adjusting the weight downward to meet the new temperature may involve pulling folks already comfortably seated. More than once in my past career, I had situations where a flight pushed normally, but had to do a gate return to shed now excess weight because the temperature went up during the taxi-out.

None of these situations is any fun for anyone concerned, but it demonstrates the complexity of the operational end of things, how sensitive aircraft can be to weight considerations, and, finally, how understandably oblivious most passengers are to it all.

I may have missed it earlier in this thread, but my info is that the UAL flight in question wasn't overbooked, per se, but that there was a last-minute need to deadhead a replacement crew ORD-SDF to cover a flight (more likely a sequence of flights) where the normal crew had timed-out as far as duty-time or flight-time. The situations are not always predictable in advance, and the decision to pull 4 passengers to accommodate the crew (one pilot was probably already using the cockpit jumpseat, or else it would have been 5 seats in the cabin) was made from the standpoint that it was better to inconvenience 4 rather than the hundreds on the SDF-XYZ flights and beyond.

UAL's having offered more than the reported $800 per pax would have gone a long way towards getting the needed number of seats for the deadhead crew, and been far more cost-effective than what transpired...

OzzyOzzie

Same here, twice. I suspect they were on the waiting list and boarded due to folks not showing up, only to show up? Once it was two drunk college girls in which one took over the guys infinite leg room seat when he got up to get something from the overhead bin (seeing the shock on his face was amusing and sad LOL) and other time a couple replaced the earlier boarders.

ursine1

Yeah. Anyone who thinks this couldn't happen on any carrier is dreaming. While not as severe, Southwest has certainly had it's share of customer "incidents."