Southwest Airlines Community

A fair question, and one I am not sure of the answer to, myself; the only time I see gate checking as an option is when the flight is very full and all the overhead bin space has been filled. Anyone else with carryon bags would need to gate check them. Southwest also says that any carryon that does not fit in the overhead would need to be gate checked:   https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/baggage/carryon-bags-pol.html    --Jessica ... View more

@Will2178 wrote: Thank you.  I thought I was sending to southwest.  Didn’t realize if was a chat room.   Just google how to contact and signed in.  I will redirect.   This is the Southwest Community Forums where peers write about their experiences with Southwest from booking flights to flying, general advice, etc. This forum is not monitored actively by SWA employees - if you have an actual complaint that you want SWA to know about you need to click "Contact Us" below and direct your inquiry to Southwest directly.   --Jessica   p.s. The federal mask mandate for public transportation ends one month from today.  ... View more

Great news!   --Jessica ... View more

Heck 4PM is a great arrival, IMO (I am not an early morning person) and you still get the afternoon/evening, so I'm not seeing too much of a problem with that particular change. Besides, don't most hotels/resorts have checkin times that are between 3-4PM anyway?   Still, - I have you beat - Southwest changed one of my flights which had an original departure of 8:00AM, a 4 hour layover, and arrival at around 4PM, to a departure of *5:30AM*, a *12 hour layover*, and an arrival after 10PM 🤣😂 You'd better believe I used my free change for something a bit more sane ...   --Jessica ... View more

@bwallet wrote: I guess my life is boring, but that's the most drama that I've EVER seen on a plane. I'm not sure what planes everyone else is flying on... Right! My life must be super boring too, as the most dramatic thing that's ever happened on any of my flights are crying babies 😂 No angry flight attendants, no angry passengers, and during the pandemic anyway most flights haven't been close to full - even now in 2022, I flew about two weeks ago and the majority of my flights were *maybe* half full. Just got lucky on those I guess ...   --Jessica ... View more

I saw this promo offered on the Southwest web site. Once you spend $5K (and probably after the billing cycle completes) than the Companion Pass would become active - the T&C says it will take up to "8 weeks."    IMO, I'd spend way less $ just paying out of pocket for flights for a friend vs the $5K you need to spend to get this "deal." Even if you wanted to use CP, say, 6 times over the next year, if your friend paid out of pocket for 6 flights that cost $300 RT each, they would only pay $1,800, significantly less than the $5K spend required here, which is why I never think these "deals" are worth it.    --Jessica ... View more

Southwest has been making schedule changes that are affecting April / May flights at the moment - are you sure your flight was cancelled and not changed to a new flight? I've had 4 flight adjustments over the past 24 hours.    In rare cases if there are no flights to accommodate your schedule Southwest will cancel your flight, but I would find it rare that they would not try to put you on a new flight to get you to your destination.   --Jessica ... View more

Technically Southwest allows one free change when they make a schedule change to your flight, however, you are free to make infinite changes and pay the difference or get travel fund credit since Southwest does not charge any fees to change or cancel your flight.   --Jessica ... View more

Sounds weird that the vouchers were used, especially the paper one because it wouldn't leave a digital trail.   --Jessica ... View more

@TheMiddleSeat wrote: Nope, Southwest no longer oversells flights.  Sounds like the travelers got great compensation for their trouble.  Vouchers can be given to other people who may be able to use them before expiration.  You're welcome to send the codes to me.   --TheMiddleSeat Ditto!   — Jessica ... View more

@lmichele wrote:  The trip had to be canceled because of COVID and I assumed that since I purchased this ticket in Oct 2021 I would have until Oct 2022 to use this very large value.  ... I put toward this trip a $50 voucher credit that was on my sons account, I had no idea that would negate the FULL value of this ticket to the vouchers expiration date of June 2022 -----------   Your mistake here was not understanding how travel fund expiration dates work. Your initial assumption was correct, your travel funds are valid for one year from the date of booking your flight. *However* if you use travel funds from a previous cancellation to book a new flight, and then cancel that, the new travel funds take the expiration date of the travel fund you applied.   --Jessica ... View more

I am confused by this - I book through Southwest Hotels all the time. Why are you calling? If your reservation was successful you should have gotten an e-mail confirmation - I have never not gotten one. If for some reason you did not get one, you can enter your e-mail address here and your confirmation e-mail will be resent:   https://secure.southwesthotels.com/myreservations.html?aid=2077218&ref=SWHTL    Also:   "I said I have tried calling Booking.com but if you don't have a confirmation number you can not access their site."   This isn't technically true. These days all you need is an e-mail address to log onto Booking.com directly - I just tried it and they sent me a verification link via e-mail, I clicked it, and I was instantly signed in. However, since the hotel reservations are technically done through southwesthotels.com, your reservations will only show there and not on booking.com.    --Jessica ... View more

Southwest Vacations is a 3rd party service that Southwest uses for combined airline and hotel reservations. I don't think it's fair to say that Southwest has "no involvement" with SV considering SV is predominantly featured right on Southwest.com along with other 3rd party services that Southwest also utilizes like Booking.com for hotel bookings or Avis, Hertz etc for car rentals. With that said, since it is 3rd party you are not communicating with actual Southwest representatives when you have issues with a SV reservation. Here is their "about"  page which explains more about who they are: https://www.southwestvacations.com/general/about-southwest-vacations and their "Support" link at the top has options for not only e-mail but also a "chat with an agent" feature. Have you tried that?    All of that aside, you have not explained your issue. What was your issue with the booking or a cancellation? I bet dollars to donuts it has to do with travel credit, refunds, or something similar, but without more detail it's impossible to know.    --Jessica ... View more

@chgoflyer wrote: Southwest was pretty clear about how it's supposed to work when they first posted the September, 2022 extension policy, even including an example:     At that time, I reached out to a representative here, who responded to me via private message and verified that:   Once the travel funds are used to make a purchase, they will then expire 12 months from the date of purchase, overriding the original expiration date. So if you use the benefits August 2022 and for some reason the flight is cancelled, they will then expire August 2023. If not used, they would expire September 7, 2022.     Whether or not this means anything now (or more importantly, will mean anything in the upcoming months heading into September 7, 2022) remains to be seen.   This is how I always understood it. For those travel funds that were extended to Sept 2022, if you attempted to use those funds and then cancelled the flight at any point prior to Sept 2022 they would get a new expiration date one year from when you initially reused the funds to book.   --Jessica ... View more

I am hopeful for more nonstop flights!   --Jessica ... View more

@GodDyhu wrote: In the midst of a pandemic We are 2 years into this. We are no longer "in the midst' of anything; we are on the tail end. We have vaccines, therapeutics, and a much more mild strain of a contagious virus. It's time to end the restrictions and resume normal life. Some of us have been saying this since the spring/summer of 2020 ... but oh well, here we are 😉    --Jessica ... View more

"My wife is from Barcelona, Spain."   What an odd way to begin a rant about a predominantly American airline.    --Jessica ... View more

My guess is you booked the cheapest fare (Wanna Get Away) - it's nonrefundable but you have a year from when you booked (not your fly date) to use the funds to fly.   --Jessica ... View more

@jeffmissie wrote: I ASSUMED that money would be put back in my credits and could still be used by Sept 2022.   You assumed incorrectly. If you use those Sept 2022 travel funds to book a flight on, say,  January 1, 2022, and you cancel your flight on January 10, 2022, your travel funds are now valid one year from when you made the purchase - January 1, 2023. Which - actually - is even longer than September 2022.    Depending on when you booked and when you cancelled, a year should still be plenty of time to use your travel funds and fly, but based on the post it sounds like you booked and cancelled about a year ago.    --Jessica ... View more

Checkins are based on time zone, so make sure you are not an hour early to check in! I've had this happen before on a few flights when I didn't realize what time zone I was in and tried checking in an hour earlier than I realized ... lol   --Jessica ... View more

You can use up to 3 forms of payment when making a reservation, so it sounds like your 2 travel funds will be enough to cover your flight, so you should be good to go!   --Jessica ... View more

Sounds like a pretty awesome birthday - what better way to celebrate than with Southwest 😄    --Jessica ... View more

Preferably neither!   --Jessica ... View more

You are at the airport. Why aren't you talking to Southwest there, at the gate / service desk?    --Jessica ... View more

You don't need proof of vax or a negative test to fly anywhere within the continental United States, so as long as you are feeling well you should be fine! Of course, if you are unwell, have symptoms, or test positive, I would recommend postponing your trip.   --Jessica ... View more

You sure can, I recently did this myself with a few travel funds I have, but a note of caution that *if* you apply travel funds and then cancel your flight, your resulting travel funds will be given the expiration date of the earliest travel funds that you applied to your reservation.   So, let's say you book a flight on January 1, 2022. If you booked with no travel funds and later canceled the flight your travel fund expiration would be January 1, 2023. But let's say you had a travel fund that was expiring on May 1, 2022 that you wanted to use up. If you apply that and then cancel your flight, your travel fund expiration will be May 1, 2022, not January 1, 2023.   Southwest explains this, and more Travel Fund FAQ, on this page: https://www.southwest.com/faq/travel-funds    --Jessica ... View more

Southwest has already done more than enough to make qualifying for A-List and Companion Pass easier this year -  as they did in 2020, you only had to earn 100K points for CP this year, as opposed to the standard 125K points you would earn in a normal year. More info on the reduced requirements here:    https://www.southwest.com/rapid-rewards-boost/    They aren't going to make an exception for you because you were afraid to fly in 2021. Many others were not, and in fact flew in 2020 as well. My first "COVID era" flight was August 2020, and I have flown many times since. Flying is, and has always been, very safe.   There's always next year!    --Jessica ... View more