Phony flight delay issued to save money.
A while ago I booked a flight on Southwest Airlines.
The flight was overbooked by more than 10 seats so I asked to be placed on the bump list, (i.E., to give up my seat for a later flight and a free ticket for later use.)
Fifteen minutes before boarding they announced that the flight was delayed due to bad weather at the destination airport.
After about 15 ticket holders immediately rebooked on later flights and left the boarding area, within 5-10 minutes. A few mintues later they then announced that the weather had all of sudden cleared up and the flight would be boarding on (or near) the scheduled time after all.
What do you know - - all of sudden they no longer had an overbooked airline and no bumps were needed.
When I arrived at the destination airport I asked the SWA gate agent about the "bad weather" at their aiport - - she did not have a clue about any bad weather and stated that there had been no delays - - the sky had been sunny and clear all day, and the airpost was not backed up at all.
This was a systematic effort to abuse customers to keep costs down. SWA purposely overbooks flights to take advantage of the no-shows and keep their cash. But when they all show up to fly they then find a "weather delay" to deal with the problem instead of issuing expensive bump credits.
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