Changing Flight

[Friasz1]

One of the things I loved most about SW was that you could change flights at no cost. I knew this had changed, but not in the way I experienced last week. I booked what I thought was a flight for my kids from Denver to Las Vegas on Mar 10th. When I went to give them the checkin info I so I made a hug mistake and put it for the Mar 9th. I had to change the flight as my son was still in the middle of his baseball tournament. Originally I paid $150.42 for the 2 one ways. To change to the next day I had to $351.54. Totaling $501.96. This was a very expensive mistake. I expected to have to pay to change as I know you guys change that, but not pay over double what I originally paid. Unfortunately SW is no longer my favorite airline as this charged completely modified our family vacation. 

[SoCalFlyer97]

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@Friasz1 wrote:

One of the things I loved most about SW was that you could change flights at no cost. I knew this had changed, but not in the way I experienced last week. I booked what I thought was a flight for my kids from Denver to Las Vegas on Mar 10th. When I went to give them the checkin info I so I made a hug mistake and put it for the Mar 9th. I had to change the flight as my son was still in the middle of his baseball tournament. Originally I paid $150.42 for the 2 one ways. To change to the next day I had to $351.54. Totaling $501.96. This was a very expensive mistake. I expected to have to pay to change as I know you guys change that, but not pay over double what I originally paid. Unfortunately SW is no longer my favorite airline as this charged completely modified our family vacation. 

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Hello-

Sorry this happened to you. This forum is customer-to-customer; this reply is coming from a SW customer too.

To be clear, when Southwest markets "No Change Fees", that means the airline doesn't charge a processing fee to change the dates or cancel a flight; however the difference in fare is always applied unless SW posts a Travel Advisory for the travel dates or a SW-initiated change was made to the reservation beforehand (in that case, a +/-14 date change can be made at no difference of fare).

Many other carriers charge both a processing fee and the difference in fare which gives Southwest a huge advantage in the market. Currently, there is an incentive of booking flights early as last-minute bookings carry higher fares, especially if seats begin to sell out. In your case, the difference of fare was $351.54 which certainty appears very steep but it is also likely because the date was changed from Saturday 3/9 to Sunday 3/10, the latter being a "super" peak day for travel at LAS.

I fly frequently from Southern California to LAS. For LAS, travel demand is at much greater demand on Sundays than Saturdays and will thus carry a much heavier fare. I've been able to lock in many sales and deals on Southwest to LAS; I've never been able to get those deals for a Sunday travel. That could explain why your difference in fare was extraordinarily steep.

Ordinarily, if I were caught in a date confusion mess, I would have traveled on 3/9 and spent the night (usually, this would have been more cost effective than paying $351.54 extra); however, you mentioned your kids were the ones traveling and decently priced hotels can be very hard to find at LAS on Saturday nights; thus, this one is a tough call.

At this point, I would have owned up on the responsibility and paid the difference, or explored alternative travel options and if the alternative worked, scrap the flight reservation and use the credit for later. Going forward, always double check the dates when booking flights for any airline (or rental cars, hotels or even train tickets for that matter); when Southwest sends the follow up emails, those would be good places to check again.

We as customers are responsible for ensuring the correct dates are selected. Thankfully, we will not be at the mercy of any processing or cancellation fees under Southwest in the event we need to change the dates or cancel reservations.

[DancingDavidE]

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@Friasz1 wrote:

One of the things I loved most about SW was that you could change flights at no cost. I knew this had changed, but not in the way I experienced last week. I booked what I thought was a flight for my kids from Denver to Las Vegas on Mar 10th. When I went to give them the checkin info I so I made a hug mistake and put it for the Mar 9th. I had to change the flight as my son was still in the middle of his baseball tournament. Originally I paid $150.42 for the 2 one ways. To change to the next day I had to $351.54. Totaling $501.96. This was a very expensive mistake. I expected to have to pay to change as I know you guys change that, but not pay over double what I originally paid. Unfortunately SW is no longer my favorite airline as this charged completely modified our family vacation. 

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This is the same as it has always been - there's not an explicit fee for changing (the legacy airlines at one point charged $100+ to make a change even if the fare was the same) - but you do have to pay the current fare. Especially if you realized the mistake the day before or same day then the fare difference has always had some tendency to be higher on short notice for airfare. If you had realized the mixup three weeks ago the fare may have been available at a lower current price.

In fact it is well-known among Southwest passengers that if the price drops after you purchased a ticket you can re-price it and take the extra as a flight credit. 

I'm sorry this caught you by surprise - the last minute fares being high isn't universal but if the route has sold well the airline will be increasing the rate for those last few seats.

Even on partially sold flights the price often goes up in the three days prior to departure. 

Here's a live example for ORD-DEN where Southwest is competing with United on this route and you can see the close-in dates are high and the further out are lower with some exceptions for Friday/weekends...but the idea holds.

I'd expect this pattern to roll forward each day with the higher priced flights close to the date and cheaper further out.