Does Southwest typicaly overbook.

[TripletDad]

We leave for our trip to Florida in one week. I was wondering does Southwest usually overbook their flights? We are flying out of Albany NY.

TripletDad.

 

[Lewisc]

including SW overbook. You can call and ask if you're flight is overbooked.

Don't worry get there early and you won't get bumped. For that matter even if you don't get there real early there are generally enough volunteers, but if you aren't at the boarding gate at the required time (10 minutes?) before the flight you're out of luck.

 

[mareed]

I can't vouch for this for sure, but I'd recommend checking your flight online through southwest.com. If they're still selling tickets, it's probably not overbooked. Our return flight last March was listed on their website a few weeks before our trip, but was marked out so you couldn't select it and buy tickets. So, I assumed it was sold out, and was mentally prepared to jump at the chance to voluntarily be bumped if they asked. Sure enough they did ask for 3 volunteers, so my DH and my 2 DS volunteered to be bumped and received $300 vouchers each. They immediately placed them on another plane that was waiting for them and got home about 2 hours after me with a change of planes instead of non-stop like the original flight. I was able to go home and get unpacked before returning to the airport to pick them up. It worked out great and paid for our next trip!

 

[DVC-Don]

I have heard announcements while flying SW to Orlando asking for volunteers to be bumped several times.

 

[GAIL HAYDEN]

I would love to hear that announcement!!!! We have only had it happen once, on Delta and it was great. But, I think I would only volunteer on the way home.

 

[Lewisc]

Originally posted by mareed
I If they're still selling tickets, it's probably not overbooked. !

Overbooked means that they continued to sell seats after the flight was sold out. The fact that they are continuing to sell seats doesn't really tell you what you want to know. Just call and ask.

I was told that SW overbooks almost all their flights, they have a fair amount of no shows (people traveling on unrestricted tickets and RR reservations).

You can call and ask, they'll tell you how overbooked the flight is.

 

[erikthewise]

If airlines didn't overbook, their planes would be consistently be 5-10% empty on flights that had sufficient demand to fill the plane. (Those more knowledgeable should feel free to insert the correct percentage -- I'm only guessing.)

The only problem is when they OVER-overbook, i.e. sell extra tickets in excess of cancellations. Then they have to ask for volunteers.

Once in such a situation the gate attendant announced that the flight was "completely overbooked". I turned to the gentlemen next to me and asked him "Does that mean that EVERY seat has been sold twice?" He just replied "Quite." (British)

 

[dznyntnh]

Two years ago I took my first cross country trip on Southwest (MHT-LAS).

I had one stopover each way and everytime I boarded the plane they made the announcement that the plane was "completely booked" and fill in every seat. This made me cringe cuz I get there early so i can get a window or aisle seat with (hopefully) an empty center seat.

I got my empty center seat on every leg of the flight except Nashville back to Manchester and on that trip it had nothing to do with overbooking, it had to do with getting into Nashville late and getting a C boarding pass and having to go all the way to the back of the plane.

I love Southwest and have never had a problem with overbooking. I just get there early and get my A boarding pass and I get on the lane as soon as they announce for boarding.

The only real problems I've ever had with Southwest are when they get your connection in late and punish you with a bad boarding pass (this happened one time) and when they let every person in the boarding area with a kid get on the plane before you (this happened on every leg of our trip to Vegas last summer) I'm not talking infants and toddlers here, I'm talking about teenagers. When I complained they told me that it was children under five, but they had an entire baseball team that wanted to sit together. I said perhaps they should have flown an airline that reserves seats, I was not happy because I had been sitting on the floor for over an hour to ensure we got to sit together.

But all in all the few problems I've had with Southwest are nothing compared to issues I have with other Airlines.