09-19-2018
12:40 PM
09-19-2018
12:40 PM
I'm speculating, but there was a huge outrage nationally against overselling airplanes a few years back. At that time Southwest agreed they wouldn't intentionally oversell flights (plane change, weather, etc. may still cause this to happen occasionally). I'm sure that as a result of that change in practice there will now be more likely to have a few unoccupied seats each flight, and costs paid by everyone who does fly would need to cover the empties compared to before. Southwest also has people looking to standby that are frequent flyers, so having some spots to keep those people happy is a good thing, and they wouldn't want to give away an empty seat for cheap if it may be worth more, or if demand for that seat may show up in the form of a Business Select passenger. Actually I hadn't put a correlation together yet but the end of overselling seems to coincide at least partially with the increased benefits of same-day standby to A-listers...hmm...
... View more