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What does southwest do if your 1st flight gets in too late to make a connecting flight

Will0329
Explorer B

I fly once a month between burbank,California and seattle. On the late afternoon/ early evening flights from burbank to seattle im noticing most of the flights get to Oakland, San jose or Sacramento too late to make the connection to seattle. The reason the flights arrive too late for the connection is because they are delayed 2 hours.

 

So my question is what happens if I get on a flight from burbank to Oakland, San jose or Sacramento and due to the 1st flight delay I miss my connection to seattle?? 

 

And then the next flight from Sacramento, San jose or Oakland to seattle isn't until 6am or 8am the next day.

 

Would southwest force me to camp out at the airport overnight?? 

4 REPLIES 4

Re: What does southwest do if your 1st flight gets in too late to make a connecting flight

Will0329
Explorer B

Like for example today the 3.50pm flight from burbank,California to Oakland left at 5.50pm instead of 3.50pm. The burbank to Oakland flight landed in Oakland at 6.50pm

 

The connecting flight in Oakland going to seattle took off at 6.20pm. 

 

What would southwest do if you got to Oakland and missed the connection to seattle because your 1st flight was delayed?? 

 

 

Re: What does southwest do if your 1st flight gets in too late to make a connecting flight

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

With a delay that long you should be proactive and request a change of itinerary before leaving BUR. Yeah, it would be great if Southwest did this proactively for you, but that's not likely. In addition to routing through through OAK it looks like there are options to SEA going through SMF or SJC. There also appear to be later flights from OAK to SEA, today there's a 950pm, so landing in OAK at 650 just leaves you with 3 hours for dinner.

 

Speaking up before the first flight is always going to give you the most options and decreases the likelihood of you getting stuck somewhere. Getting stuck does happen and depending on the reasons for the delay you may be able to talk someone into giving you a hotel voucher. If you know for certain you are going to be stuck you may just want to choose to stay where you are and do all the traveling the next morning. 

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: What does southwest do if your 1st flight gets in too late to make a connecting flight

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@Will0329 wrote:

Like for example today the 3.50pm flight from burbank,California to Oakland left at 5.50pm instead of 3.50pm. The burbank to Oakland flight landed in Oakland at 6.50pm

 

The connecting flight in Oakland going to seattle took off at 6.20pm. 

 

What would southwest do if you got to Oakland and missed the connection to seattle because your 1st flight was delayed?? 

 

 


Southwest will allow you to change your flight to an alternate route to SEA when the original flight is delayed when you get to the airport. So if the 3:50 pm flight was already delayed when you came to BUR at say 2 pm the agent at the ticket counter would have the ability to check you in to the alternate route including luggage.

 

If the flight is still on time when you check in then you’ll have to see how the day goes. 

Once you are past security you can still change flights in the case of a long delay if seats are available, but TBD if any checked bags would also be switched. If you only have a carry on it would help in this scenario. 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.

Re: What does southwest do if your 1st flight gets in too late to make a connecting flight

dfwskier
Aviator A

Southwest allows a no cost change whenever any flight is delayed more than 60 minutes.

 

Given what you said at first 

 

1) why book one of the constantly delayed flights? Take an earlier flight   .or.

 

2) connect thru one of the other cities listed earlier in the thread