I love Southwest.
Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
141–150 of 335 posts
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree 100%. I often hear people talk about how Southwest offers such a great experience. I find the boarding process frustrating (and no more efficient, unfortunately) and the staff no better than my usual airline—either far less friendly, or hokey in a very contrived way.
Canned friendliness is, IMO, worse than brusque professionalism.
Especially on Delta and American, I don't even get brusque professionalism, I get outright rudeness. The longer I've lived in the US, the more I've learned to minimize conversations to flight attendants to "I'll just have water", "thanks" and "have a nice day".
AirTran (now part of Southwest) used to be really nice.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#143Southwest Airlines has the best website, best checked luggage policy, best change policy, and now no overbooking. The big four domestic airlines all treat coach passengers like cattle, but Southwest is the least predatory. Edit: Also, consider that Southwest is very profitable despite the fact that they don't have first class or business class sections on their aircraft. Yes, passengers pay different fares. But as fa…
To offer a counterpoint, Southwest also offers the worst boarding procedure, unless travelling alone or with kids. My wife and I were going on vacation and it was impossible to get seats together as we were pretty far back in the assigned line positions and by the time we got on the plane, there were no two vacant seats next to each other. After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us fu…
> After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us further ahead in the line but we tried that, checking in within minutes of checkin opening and were still pretty far back in the lines.
"Minutes" isn't good enough. I travel Southwest with my wife all the time and we have never failed to get seats next to each other. You need to go the the check-in form 24 hours and 2-3 minutes before your flight, have your confirmation number and other info filled out and click "Check-in" the exact second the clock turns over to 24 hours before your flight. That will probably get you a low-numbered B or a high-numbered A boarding group.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#144I have a question for the HN crowd: what would happen if airlines sold their seats at a fixed price and let customers resell them? For the sake of the discussion let's assume that all seats are in the same class (ie: economy) - there are no business / first class seats. So the idea would be: 1. All seats are sold at the same price, no matter how early or how late you buy. The price covers all the costs associated wit…
> Since this has never been done - to my knowledge - there must be something wrong with it. But I wonder what it is?
Sure it has. Look at concert tickets. You are basically talking about introducing the scalper into the airline ticket market.
Try to get any tickets to a major act at anything approaching face price - especially for the prime seats. You can't do it. The scalpers always beat you to it.
Now imagine, the only seats left after the scalpers get through are the tickets in the way back.
Now lets just throw in the mix handling flight changes. Because from the airlines' perspective every flight is full. You could never book through the airline....
.... I could go on and on...
But yeah .... bad idea (sorry!)
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#145Southwest Airlines has the best website, best checked luggage policy, best change policy, and now no overbooking. The big four domestic airlines all treat coach passengers like cattle, but Southwest is the least predatory. Edit: Also, consider that Southwest is very profitable despite the fact that they don't have first class or business class sections on their aircraft. Yes, passengers pay different fares. But as fa…
To offer a counterpoint, Southwest also offers the worst boarding procedure, unless travelling alone or with kids. My wife and I were going on vacation and it was impossible to get seats together as we were pretty far back in the assigned line positions and by the time we got on the plane, there were no two vacant seats next to each other. After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us fu…
counter point:
i prefer southwest because there's little incentive to fight for position. They give you a complete ordering, so you can wait until the last minute to line up.
(also as others mentioned, it's faster which is great too)
If you care so much about an aisle seat, get early check in, it's $15.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
To offer a counterpoint, Southwest also offers the worst boarding procedure, unless travelling alone or with kids. My wife and I were going on vacation and it was impossible to get seats together as we were pretty far back in the assigned line positions and by the time we got on the plane, there were no two vacant seats next to each other. After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us fu…
Counter-counter point: Southwest boards faster, by far, than airlines using the standard pre-assigned method. That means less time sitting on the plane, or waiting to board the place. Also means less abuse of selling seat upgrades.
The seat upgrade procedure is pretty nice. $20 for priority boarding on southwest vs. multiple times that for a "economy deluxe" seat on other airlines? Sign me up.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it gets really high, I imagine passengers would do their best to drive it up. Would you volunteer if the offer was $2k out of a $100k vs a $10k pool? It defies classic game theory to an extent, but humans like to roll the dice.
You're going to collude with ~100 random strangers to prevent anyone else from taking the offer until it gets to the level you want it to get to, and then agree to split it somehow? Ha ha ha.
At a high enough price, you encourage exactly those conspiracies.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#148I think my favorite solution to this is to sell "guaranteed" and "standby" tickets. Sell full plane capacity of "guaranteed", and then any ticket after that is bumpable/standby. You could potentially switch to sell "bumpable" tickets earlier, too, at a discount. If the airline is flying ~8 flights a day from SFO-SEA, I'd be fine in many cases paying x% less for y% risk of being bumped one or two flights later.
People are price-sensitive (will always buy the cheapest option) and then complain when they don't get the expensive service. It is incredibly difficult to explain to someone: "You are not getting to your daughter's wedding because reasons." ...and nobody wins that argument when it happens.
Apart from removing over-booking completely, the Delta "pre-blind-auction" is the best choice. All tickets are sold at their regular prices (no random discounts), and day-of people are able to decide if they are willing to be bumped (ideally: by how long) as well as the price it would take.
There's a huge difference in "I'll take $1000 to be bumped to a later flight today" and "I'll take $1000 to be bumped to a flight that's two days later" (depending on the route, that is something that can happen).
It's a delicate balance between customer service, incentives, and profit, and "guaranteed v. standby" pretty clearly fails.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#149The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked. I've seen a number of overbooked southwest flights and people can't line up fast enough for a $300 flight credit + next available flight. I can't imagine it ever going over $1k. IMHO if any airline should continue overbooking it's SWA. No first class, no assigned seats. Most of the flights are short range with multiple flig…
Yea, I agree the problem is not auctioning seats high enough. But the proximate issue is that United didn't offer cash, but $800 in United Fun Bux that are worthless for most people. The vouchers they were offering were only valid at dates United decided. The vouchers expired after a year. And they are offered in coupons for which you can only use one coupon per flight, and the excess value is lost. Practically all n…
Yes, the voucher thing is nonsense. I've been on overbooked flights before where I could have easily taken the next flight instead. I never volunteer, because the vouchers are worthless to me. Offer me cash and I'll often be first in line.
Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes
#150The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked. I've seen a number of overbooked southwest flights and people can't line up fast enough for a $300 flight credit + next available flight. I can't imagine it ever going over $1k. IMHO if any airline should continue overbooking it's SWA. No first class, no assigned seats. Most of the flights are short range with multiple flig…
One possibility is that the regional flights are only marginally profitable for United, and very slim margin for the regional carrier (Republic Airline/United Express) so they limit voucher amounts for bumped passengers. For an Embraer 170 aircraft (70 seats) the operating cost of the flight is about $2500-$3000 for the Chicago to Louisville flight. A supplementary flight with the 4 crew and any re-booked passengers…
They could have just used a rental car or a taxi. Airline crews don't have to travel by air. The amount of inflexibility displayed by United is breathtaking.