Skip to main content

Southwest Airlines Community

Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to extend?

elsierain
Explorer C

There might already similar posts like this and I'm sure people feel the same frustration. I AM very disappointed at how southwest deals with customer frustration during the pandemic and being not contextual.

 

My original flight is 2020 Feb, when the covid already started to spread. I don't think it's safe to travel anymore so cancel the flight and the travel fund set to expire on 2021 Feb.

 

Southwest offered travel fund extension and transfer to points opportunities, but the dates seems arbitrary to me. Mine was out of the window of March-Sep 2020 and become ineligible. Reading some past posts, it seems there is a way to game the system but I didn't catch the chance. It seems to me that southwest is randomly punishing customers like me.

 

Is there any advice still? the $100 extension won't do much as my fund is $100+ and I don't see myself travel in the next 6 months as well.

 

5 REPLIES 5

Re: Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to ext

gsking
Aviator C

My advice?   Travel.   It's not how you catch Covid. 

 

Unless you've been at home for 9 months due to being in a high risk group, traveling adds no risk. 

 

I speak from experience,  and studies say the same thing. 

Re: Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to ext

dfwskier
Aviator A

@gsking wrote:

My advice?   Travel.   It's not how you catch Covid. 

 

 I agree

 

https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/pr/2020-10-08-02/

 

Research Points to Low Risk for COVID-19 Transmission Inflight

 

"

Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) demonstrated the low incidence of inflight COVID-19 transmission with an updated tally of published cases. Since the start of 2020 there have been 44 cases of COVID-19 reported in which transmission is thought to have been associated with a flight journey (inclusive of confirmed, probable and potential cases). Over the same period some 1.2 billion passengers have traveled.

“The risk of a passenger contracting COVID-19 while onboard appears very low. With only 44 identified potential cases of flight-related transmission among 1.2 billion travelers, that’s one case for every 27 million travelers. We recognize that this may be an underestimate but even if 90% of the cases were un-reported, it would be one case for every 2.7 million travelers. We think these figures are extremely reassuring.  Furthermore, the vast majority of published cases occurred before the wearing of face coverings inflight became widespread,” said Dr. David Powell, IATA’s Medical Advisor.

Re: Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to ext

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

@elsierain wrote:

Is there any advice still? the $100 extension won't do much as my fund is $100+ and I don't see myself travel in the next 6 months as well.

 


To answer your questions about options for extending the expiration, sadly you mentioned all of the possibilities, opportunities, and options that have been available so there's nothing else that can be done to offer an extension at this time.  I understand you may think the extension that was offered in 2020 could be considered "gaming the system", but I do think Southwest actually wants people to utilize their system like that.  They encourage people to use their policies to their advantage and compliment people on social media when they post about benefiting from the policies.  It doesn't help you now, but I do hope you will take the time to become more familiar with how the policies could benefit you and will become a frequent visitor to this Community where we discuss how to do that.

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to ext

floridaguy
Aviator C

I got my LUV Voucher extended with just a phone call.  Try that.

Re: Travel fund expired at 2021 Feb, basically covered the entire period of covid, but no way to ext

dfwskier
Aviator A

@pupilpath wrote:

 


Your complaint might have been credible except that you included a spam link -- which I have reported.

 

Say goodbye to your post -- very soon.