Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by toast0 on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @08:34PM (#34156433)

If you read the linked faq, there's a difference betwen overbooking and overselling. If Southwest sells all the seats for a segment, but they end up flying the segment with a different plane than scheduled, there may be less seats than scheduled passengers. That's more likely to happen furong the holidays when flights are very full and weather delays are common and there's more equipment changes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by dolni on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @12:14AM (#34157758)

To me, that reads as a crappy distinction intended to inspire some pity for Southwest.

The effect is the same either way. Someone paid for a ticket and they don't get to board the plane.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by pigbearpig on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @01:19AM (#34158047)

C'mon, there is a huge difference between an airline selling a seat they don't have and not having it due to an equipment issue.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by danaris on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @10:12AM (#34161706)

Or, to look at it from another perspective:

The airline sold you something that they can't deliver because they refuse to keep extra planes around. They refuse to keep extra planes around because that would eat into profits, and would mean their execs wouldn't be able to buy their third gold-plated yachts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by toast0 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @11:46AM (#34162820)

The difference is intent. Overbooking intentionally creates conflict likely to result in a ticketed passenger unable to board. Overselling also results in a ticketed passenger unable to board, but was not intentional; at least not directly intentional. You could argue flying planes with different capabilities offers the possibility to have a lesser plane subsituted and that's an intentional choice, but...

Another way to think of it is what could an airline have reasonably done to avoid the situation? If it's overbooking, the reasonable thing is to not overbook. If it's overselling, they could choose not to fully book their scheduled equipment, but is that reasonable? They can't choose to have 100% reliable planes and crews and weather and ground operations. Stuff happens, and it's certainly reasonable to be upset when it does, but understanding why it happened can be helpful, so making a distinction between overbooking and overselling makes sense to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by MerelyMortal on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @06:32AM (#34159970)

Aren't all Southwest Airlines planes identical?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours by toast0 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @11:18AM (#34162470)

No, they're all 737s, but there's a lot of variation within that.

Seatguru says [1] southwest flies three variants, 737-700 with 143 seats and 737-800 and 737-Max 8 both with 175 seats.

If a -700 gets substituted in, that's a lot of missing seats. I've also flown on planes where one seat is out of service for whatever reason and usually has a plastic cover on it.

[1] https://seatguru.com/airlines/Southwest_Airlines/information...

[ Parent | on HN ]