Originally Posted by pinniped

Feels like an overreaction to me. UA3411 had nothing to do with overbooking.

Originally Posted by Kevin AA

re no more overbooking... I was thinking about this:

With more open seats at the time of departure, this greatly increases the value of the free standby policy for A-listers. This means WN could get frequent fliers who are on the fence to switch from another airline because the probability of getting an empty seat is now much greater. While the % of seats filled won't go down that much, there is clearly a tremendous difference between a flight with 3 open seats and 4 on standby than there is with a flight that has 6 open seats and 4 on standby.

Not overbooking, the standby privilege, and the greater number of people who are able to use it means the late flights will have even more open seats. This is awesome for people who have mis-connected. I expect the number of people who get stuck overnight at a hub because they mis-connected and the one and only remaining flight tonight is full will drop like a rock. That increases the value of a WN ticket.

In other words, even if you never volunteer your seat, or never even hear an announcement for volunteers, the fact that you could miss your flight, or standby, and have a significantly greater chance of getting on board (say, 40% instead of 10% or whatever it is) will increase the value of a WN ticket, which means if the $59 tickets sell out sooner, more people will be willing to buy a $79 WN ticket instead of just jumping to another carrier for $79 where you can be almost assured of a full flight and almost no chance of getting home today in the event of an oversell or misconnection.

Originally Posted by BerenErchamion

No, but the uninformed public reaction to it did, and that's what companies find themselves forced to respond to.

And we're all going to suffer for it.

Originally Posted by GrayAnderson

This is basically the B6 situation: They don't overbook but if they have to hot-swap an A320 in for an A320, that's something like 50 pax to reaccommodate (and, in the defense of both airlines, a reasonable case for doing so). The only way an airline is going to succeed in getting that many volunteers is to get lucky.

And yes, I was thinking within an airline with my "Priceline style" (or probably more properly "Hotwire hotel style" offering.

Originally Posted by sdsearch

I presume that was a typo (and you meant to have a different plane type for one of those cases)?

In my experience, it doesn't take a smaller plane to cause reaccommodation havoc at the gate. At least at AA, oodles of people lose their seat assignments even in a modest change of plane (single aisle to slightly bigger single aisle). While they can get a seat in that case, if they're not on top of it they may not be able to get as good a seat as they originally reserved (if someone else gets it first in the scramble). And to some people that's almost as bad as not getting a seat at all (if they got dumped out of an extra legroom aisle and dumped into a cramped middle seat, just because of a plane swap).

Which of course isn't a situation that can happen at Southwest right now. (But if Southwest ever goes to assigned seating, then they'll have that challenge on equipment swaps too.)

Originally Posted by Poker2012chu

Hmm, I'm not so optimistic. The no more overbooking policy sounds great and all until you see that WN will be making less money because they can no longer sell more fares than are available for a flight. Less revenue for not being able to sell as many fares as they want means WN will be recuperating the difference one way or another, and it probably won't be to the benefit of the customer. It sounds too good to be true, imo in this day and age, for an airline to stop overbooking flights without some kind of catch.

This could mean no more free bags, checked or carry-on, or it could mean something like introducing a change fee or penalty. This is not good for people who need flexible, last minute travel options. Imagine having a $200+ change fee (plus the fare difference) just to change your flight. Many other airlines do this, and the no change fee really set WN apart from the rest.

Originally Posted by marlin

When is the system crossover? Wondering if anyone has currently received LUV vouchers for voluntary denied boarding?

Originally Posted by rsteinmetz70112

GK's initial statement included the possibility of occasional VDBs due to some situations. He mentioned necessary transportation of employees, but other situations could cause it.