Good news, frequent flyers: Southwest airlines will no longer overbook its flights, CEO Gary Kelly said on Thursday morning.
“We’re seriously reconsidering that practice. I’ve made the decision and the company’s made the decision that we’ll cease to overbook going forward,” Kelly told CNBC. “The last thing that we want to do is deny a customer their flight. We’re going to work very hard to eliminate as many pain points for travel…as possible.”
The executive didn’t detail when the airline would stop the common industry practice of overbooking, but did tell say that “it’s something that we will be discontinuing here very shortly.” Southwest joins JetBlue in ending its overbooking policy, according to Business Insider.
Southwest’s decision comes after David Dao, a passenger on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., was forcibly removed to make room for United employees who were traveling for work. Since then, airlines have been under pressure to change their overbooking policies.
