Rampant Overbooking by Southwest
 

I'm sitting here in San Jose, and it's a board of overbookings. I was listening to so many stories of people being bumped from throughout the day because of overbookings by southwest... Evidently, all the overflows from other airline cancellations are coming into Southwest and there is no self control by southwest to minimize the overbookings. Result is that all the flights are overbooked, and there is no apparent end to those that are being bumped... On top of that, Southwest is evidently telling everyone that they're delaying their flights so that more people can make their connections flights, which messes up all those who needed to get to where they needed to be on-time on a Friday night... Thank-you southwest for inconveniencing their entire customer base today...

Guys,
When extreme weather hits, the only solution is to go with the flow. No-one gets off lightly... SouthWest is one of the better airlines... if they are struggling you can be sure the others are worse|!

Agree it'll be bad, but lets not compound the problem by overbooking when it's obvious that weather is going to result in cancellations...

Using your scenerio (not booking when space is available to book) what would you tell a passenger standing in front of you? And the guy behind him and so on, as I'm sure the lines are dozens deep. If space is available, use it. And let's get to the real problem. It's other airlines booking these people on WN. "Evidently, all the overflows from other airline cancellations are coming into Southwest". Those are the OP's words so other airlines are booking them and they are coming. What is WN's fault is them not being proactive after seeing what was happening is cutting off the overbooking. Maybe it happened to fast or who knows but they should have seen this coming and done something about the overbooking levels. That part I will blame them for.

Southwest Airlines do not have ticketing agreements with any other airlines. So, "other airlines" do not book Southwest Airlines flights. Southwest has always been notorious for overbooking. Since they have no agreements with other airlines they don't have to accommodate overbooked passengers on other airlines, so their costs for overbooking are minimal.

Bingo........I knew I've been gone too long. I stand corrected and this will debunk the statement in the op that said "Evidently, all the overflows from other airline cancellations are coming into Southwest and there is no self control by southwest to minimize the overbookings." Unless they are all buying new tickets, which I would find hard to believe.

Uh, no. Try Southwest has a major operation in Baltimore which any who has read the news knows that the entire DC area has been hit horribly. These are NOT other airline passengers. These are the backlog of existing Southwest passengers trying to get home. Also, I can assure you that they were even more overbooked than it looked. In situations like this you will always have some that go ahead and drive, so there would have actually been more than what you saw.

Except for the fact that if they didn't do this, so many of those passengers wouldn't even get to their destinations that night.

I'd like to make another observation on this one - why did you see the need to post this at all? You have two complaints here, but neither are yours. Both are you-heard-it deals. Neither has affected you first hand.

Worst day ever with Southwest
 

I got a call the night before my scheduled flight from southwest and was advised to change my flight due to possible weather because the flight was going to be cancelled from the AM flight to the PM flight,which I reluctantly did. When I got to the airport, my original flight was boarding and I asked to be put back on the flight only to find,,,IT WAS COMPLETELY BOOKED. I had to sit for 7 hours before my advised flight was to leave, then that flight was late and they lost my baggage which after two days, I still do not have. I have tried calling and there is a 3 hour wait. What a joke this airline is and customer service is about a minus seven. DO NOT USE SOUTHWEST