Southwest auto cancelled my reservation 2 weeks out?
 

I'm a high mile flyer on Southwest (earned CP) who routinely books multiple reservations and rearranges them as my schedule changes. I've read that Southwest has started aggressively cancelling same day reservations but haven't had a problem with it until now. They auto cancelled a reservation for a flight 16 days out. One flight was heading east, the other west at about the same time. I planned to figure which place I needed to be next week and cancel the unneeded ticket about a week out. In the past, I've routinely booked multiple tickets for the same day and cancel them as needed a few days in advance without issue, sometimes at 24 hours out. I guess what's surprising to me about this is how far in advance they cancelled it, given that it's currently not anywhere close to a full flight. I'll submit this as a data point for people who triage tickets like I do. It doesn't bold well for my relationship with Southwest as I value the flexibility.

Since Southwest stopped overbooking, they decided to enforce the policy of auto-canceling multiple impossible bookings.
I certainly get it from a business standpoint. Why should they show a flight as booked full when it really isn't, even two weeks out? They only make money when there are butts in the seats!

This is hardly new. It is now about 16 months old. It is a direct violation of the COC.

No different than other carriers and frankly a good thing for others looking for availability.

That would be bode well, and IMO WN is smart to have started this some time ago.

Southwest has more flexibility than any other airline. You can cancel or change your ticket up to 10 minutes before departure with no change fee.

What you need to do is pick a flight to book, and then change it later if needed. Making multiple reservations and then cancelling the ones you aren't taking ties up seat inventory, and that is bad for business. It is fraudulent and I am glad that Southwest is putting a stop to it.

I tried double booking exactly once in my life...for upcoming holiday travel this year...since I wanted to talk to the wife about it after schedules opened. Within about 4 hours WN cancelled one of my flights (luckily they picked the desired one to cancel that I was going to cancel anyway)

Do you also make Friday night reservations at multiple restaurants so that one week before you can cancel the ones you decide not to go to?

If you want to get snarky at the OP, you need to make it funnier than this. Like "Do you propose to two sisters at the same time so you can take your time figuring out which one to leave at the altar? What if their father has a shotgun?".

Southwest's current (but relatively new) policy is more than fair to customers. It's not as insane as before but still IMHO not sustainable.

I've heard that people actually do this since apps like OpenTable make it so easy to make a bunch of reservations. Not surprisingly, restaurants are like the airlines and are not a fan of this behavior.

The price of the menu doesn't go up as much as 5x if I show up w/o a reservation, or make a reservation only a day in advance.

I get what WN is doing, too- but this is really about revenue on their end, as you can't book "overlapping" WGAs if your travel plans aren't certain. I don't like the new policy at all, but at least free standby for A-List helps soften the impact.

OpenTable doesn't (and as far as I know never has) allow(ed) overlapping reservations. Plus if you cancel too often OpenTable will drop you and you'll lose your points.

I make multiple reservations using OpenTable from time to time and have never had an issue. No-showing will have repercussions, multiple reservations will not.