I’m confused by Southwest’s FAQ[0] on this. They’s making a distinction between selling more seats than the plans has and merely confirming more customers than the plan has seats. How is that different? If I get to the airport and they’re asking for volunteers to take a later flight, should I care why?
If you're bumped, it's the same disruption either way, but booking the capacity of the scheduled equipment within predicted conditions is not unreasonable and it's hard to see what they could do to avoid the situation where some passengers aren't going to be able to fly on their scheduled flight.
If the weather changes such that the maximum weight is reduced, or the plane needs to be replaced and only a smaller plane is available (Southwest flies three 737 variants, one which has quite a few less seats), or a seat is broken and can't be fixed without a greater disruption, they don't really have another option than bumping passengers or always leaving many seats unsold.
It sounds like they're saying "we don't overbook on purpose, but sometimes we need to change what plane we use on a flight and we've already sold more tickets than the new plane can accommodate"
Sure, but 103% overbooking is EVERY flight. Having reduced carrying capacity because of high temps, high winds, mechanical problems or switching planes is the exception not the rule.
They don’t overbook. If a plane change or performance limit (temperature/wind related) means they’re not able to transport as many people as the original equipment is normally able to carry, that’s different than “we sell 103% of available seats and just count on it all working out…”
0. https://www.southwest.com/help/changes-and-cancellations/ove...