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Southwest Fined $200,000 for Passenger Bumping

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Bring your fine, It's on!

Yet another fine for southwest airlines.

http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/04/26/daily22.html?ana=yfcpc

Southwest Airlines fined $200,000

Southwest Airlines Co. was hit with a $200,000 fine Tuesday for violating federal rules concerning bumped passengers on oversold flights.
The U.S. Department of Transportation requires airlines to seek volunteers willing to give up their seats for compensation when a flight is oversold. If there aren’t enough volunteers and the carrier must bump passengers involuntarily, the carrier must give those passengers a written statement describing their rights and the process for selecting who gets bumped from an oversold flight.
In most cases, involuntarily bumped passengers are entitled to cash compensation of up to $800, according to a DOT statement.
The DOT Aviation Enforcement Office’s investigation into Southwest’s practices included a review of consumer complaints sent to the carrier and a site inspection at the airline’s headquarters in 2009. The investigation revealed numerous instances in which Southwest denied boarding to passengers, but did not comply with provisions of the bumping rule, according to a DOT statement.
The DOT consent order states that Southwest “is proud of its exemplary record of regulatory compliance and customer satisfaction. Further, while Southwest regrets any violations of the Department’s oversales rules, Southwest notes that on the whole it has maintained an extremely high compliance rate with respect to Part 250, especially considering that Southwest carries over 100 million passengers per year and the number of alleged violations cited by the DOT is very small in comparison.”
The carrier said it committed to improving its compliance record through additional training of employees and new tech tools relating to oversales, which should help reduce manual errors Southwest also said it is developing measures beyond the DOT rules, including notices and links to additional information that will be integrated into the booking process on its Web site.



Read more: Southwest Airlines fined $200,000 - Dallas Business Journal:
 
I love PFT! I wish more airlines did it so I could PFT, apply, get hired and then turn the job down and stay at SWA. Did I mention that I LOVE PFT!
 
Scopes should be happy. Some of those bumped pax might have ended up on Delta which might help turn a profit, at some point (but I doubt it).
 
Scopes should be happy. Some of those bumped pax might have ended up on Delta which might help turn a profit, at some point (but I doubt it).

They might have even been put on an RJ that Scopes was the FO on. So in the end he flew a SWA passenger on an RJ:)
 
The same people who complain about being bumped would be the first in line to complain about non-refundable fares.
 

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