Online Checkin not working Daylight Savings Time

[windycitydj]

Sooooo Southwest swings and misses ....again

MIllions of Southwest passengers are scratching their heads wondering why they cant check in online 11/3/2018.  I have the golden answer.

Its because the IT department did not set the servers to recognize Daylight Savings on 11/4/2018.

No notice on their website, no emails or calls to passengers.  Southwest was quietly hoping this would just disappear.  Well it did'nt.  Southwest customer support was flooded by hundreds of calls demanding why passengers could not check in. 

Not good SW.  Swing and a HUGE MISS !!!!

[Jilled65]

I noticed that this morning. My flight tomorrow departs at 7:10 am. I was trying to check in and it said it was not 24 hrs in advance? Then I remembered Daylight Savings Time. It was 8:00. I waited 10 minutes then checked in. 

[DancingDavidE]

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@windycitydj wrote:

Sooooo Southwest swings and misses ....again

MIllions of Southwest passengers are scratching their heads wondering why they cant check in online 11/3/2018.  I have the golden answer.

Its because the IT department did not set the servers to recognize Daylight Savings on 11/4/2018.

No notice on their website, no emails or calls to passengers.  Southwest was quietly hoping this would just disappear.  Well it did'nt.  Southwest customer support was flooded by hundreds of calls demanding why passengers could not check in. 

Not good SW.  Swing and a HUGE MISS !!!!

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More like roughly 500,000 passengers per day, but for sure to those 500,000 people this would be important - and excluding A-list and Early Bird which will be checked in automatically...anyway, they have posted similar messages to this in the past on the time change day:

https://www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisory_20181031541256248209.html

[DancingDavidE]

And to clarify, the 24-hours in advance still applies as advertised, but since many areas of the country as "falling back" tonight checking in at 24 hours in advance will be +1 hour of the day from your depature time....I think the software worked fine?

It's a bigger issue when we set clocks ahead as people will check in late.

For "Fall Back" day everyone tries inadvertently at T-25 hours, but can still take their shot at it when T-24 rolls around. Not really a big deal?

[chgoflyer]

This does come up twice a year. I was surprised there was no prememptive notification on Facebook or Twitter, but saw that there were also less posts from confused customers this time around, so maybe people have finally figured it out. 😉 (As noted, this is the easy one.)

[DancingDavidE]

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@chgoflyer wrote:

This does come up twice a year. I was surprised there was no prememptive notification on Facebook or Twitter, but saw that there were also less posts from confused customers this time around, so maybe people have finally figured it out. 😉 (As noted, this is the easy one.)

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Spring Forward Day ends up not being a "technical problem" and no error message is shown - the passengers all check in just fine! ...and if enough people did that, the effect would be negligible relative to the others that did the same thing.

[chgoflyer]

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@DancingDavidE wrote:

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@chgoflyer wrote:

This does come up twice a year. I was surprised there was no prememptive notification on Facebook or Twitter, but saw that there were also less posts from confused customers this time around, so maybe people have finally figured it out. 😉 (As noted, this is the easy one.)

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Spring Forward Day ends up not being a "technical problem" and no error message is shown - the passengers all check in just fine! ...and if enough people did that, the effect would be negligible relative to the others that did the same thing.

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I had suggested that this was the "easier one" since it at least makes some sense... check-in is at 24 hours hours prior to departure, as always. You just need to wait until that time frame arrives (which is one hour "later" on the clock.)

In Spring, check-in is 23 hours prior to departure. This confuses anyone who tries to adjust, as is necessary in Fall. Trying to check-in 24 hours prior fails (one hour "earlier" per the clock). But if you don't adjust at all, or are just oblivious to the change, check-in works "normally," at the same time on the clock as departure, one day earlier. So maybe this one is actually the "easiest," since it doesn't really require any change in action by the flyer.

The situation hasn't been helped over they years by confused or misinformed official posts. 😉

There's a lengthy discussion about this over at FlyerTalk: Daylight Saving Time.