Southwest Airlines Community

@wnorris00 - don't call. Contact Southwest via their social media platforms - Twitter, Facebook. They are always quick to respond.    --Jessica ... View more

Hello,   Southwest normally does not offer credit card refunds unless your flight is cancelled by Southwest, meaning, the flight no longer exists to be flown and you cannot be rescheduled, or if the flight change was extreme (i.e. a 2+ hour difference from what you had originally booked).    Southwest has been making a lot of changes as of late due to shifting demand.   --Jessica ... View more

There's nothing wrong - schedules change, especially with the pandemic and an increase or decrease in demand based on location. I am sure you can get off the plane at your second stop if you have a several hour layover.   --Jessica ... View more

Interesting that "Call Us" is being pushed by Southwest when it appears that that is the slowest form of service. A little surprised they don't at least mention their social media presence to give that option, as it's almost always quicker.   --Jessica ... View more

You can eat and drink on the plane - it's generally not a problem, as long as you put your mask back on when you are finished.   --Jessica ... View more

@AngryCovidIssue wrote: No one has said anything to me that felt like they cared, and no one has offered me anything reasonable. I'm sorry about your experience, but several things are not adding up here.   If you purchased tickets in January 2020 for a July 2020 trip, and you cancelled the trip I assume sometime between March 2020 and July 2020, your travel funds would have had an expiration of September 2022. For a period of time in 2020 (from March - September) Southwest extended travel fund expiration all the way out to 2022 if you cancelled your flight within that time period.    Despite that, it sounds like you rebooked using your credit for a December 2020 flight which, if I'm not mistaken, resets the 2022 expiration and goes back to the 1 year expiration.   I don't know what "cut our credit in half" means, and I'm not sure how your funds got extended as you claim, unless your travel funds expired and were reissued as a voucher good for 6 months, and they would have charged $100 per travel fund to do this.    Still, I can't determine how / when your funds ever expired. If you used your September 2022 travel funds to rebook for the December flight, let's say you did this in May 2020, and you cancelled after September 2020, wouldn't the funds expire in May 2021 (essentially this month)?    It's not adding up for me ...    --Jessica ... View more

I stopped reading as soon as I saw "2 year old" and "mask".    The only horror show here is you not abiding by federal regulations. While you may not agree with the practice, children 2 and up are required to wear a mask on an airplane.   That's it. That's the post.    --Jessica ... View more

There are plenty of flights that arrive after midnight all the time. I have been on quite a few of them traveling from the west coast to the east coast over the years. I have a flight in a few weeks that leaves Denver in the evening and won't get back to Philly until after midnight. Of course, it's one of the cheaper flights, but it is what it is - it's nothing new. But it's nice to hear that Southwest is bringing back several routes that they stopped in 2020 due to the pandemic, and are even bringing some brand new routes to the table.    --Jessica ... View more

I remember reading when Southwest left this airport, and it made me nervous because PHL isn't that far away and PHL is mostly an American Airlines hub - over half the terminals are strictly AA. Southwest used to have spots in terminals D & E but now they are only in the E terminal, but they've taken over the entire end of the terminal. It's better than Jet Blue or Spirit that only have a couple of gates elsewhere in terminal E.    --Jessica ... View more

Short answer: no.   Longer answer: no no no no no 😂   Serious answer: no, and let's keep it that way for domestic travel at the very least. I could maybe - maybe - understand needing the vaccination to travel internationally, but Southwest does not fly to many international destinations compared  with other airlines, so we will have to see if that becomes a requirement for the destinations they do serve. As for me, I'm healthy and relatively young in my 30s, and I'd rather see people who truly need the vaccine get it before I get it myself (even now that it's "available" to me which I find miraculous that that happened as quickly as it did, I am still not getting it right away as appointments are booked pretty far out the last I checked).   Truthfully, I'd hate to see getting a vaccine become a requirement to do what was once considered normal like travel domestically or see a show at Madison Square Garden in NYC. I'm definitely not a fan of the "vaccine passport" idea for anything other than potential international travel. Even then, I'm on the fence about the entire premise and - if it's actually adopted and becomes "normal" - what that might mean for the future of everyday life. Wearing my medical history on my arm is nobody's business but my own, IMO, and I'd like to keep it that way.        --Jessica ... View more

Bizarre. Definitely report this to Southwest.    --Jessica ... View more

Planes flying from Las Vegas are generally too hot - even now the temps are 80-90 degrees during the day. I flew about two weeks ago and the flight attendants actually tell you to close the window shades to not let the sun in and heat up the cabin ...   --Jessica ... View more

There is one caveat to your statement: you can only receive a refund if your flight was booked as an Anytime or Business Select fare. Wanna Get Away fares (the cheapest fares) are not refundable to a credit card if you cancel them.    With that said, if your flight experiences significant delays, it may actually be possible to get a refund - a significant delay would be 2 or more hours, on average, so in your situation I do not think you would have qualified for a refund.    You can read more about Southwest's refund policies here: https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/purchasing-and-refunds/refund-info-pol.html    --Jessica ... View more

There have been many changes with Southwest - and every airline on earth - due to the pandemic, and I have had many flight changes as well. I always have luck contacting Southwest through social media, particularly Twitter. Even in the "worst" of the pandemic times (last spring / summer) I got a response in about 30 minutes.   --Jessica ... View more

@Cs2hicks wrote: You’ve all seen those disgusting restrooms in airports  You must not have flown in the past year or more. Restrooms are extremely clean. We are in the middle of a pandemic where everyone is scared of germs. Dirty restrooms are not going to be a thing at airports these days.    --Jessica ... View more

The Spirit counter? This is a forum for Southwest.    That aside, if you were expecting a refund from your cancelled connecting flight in Florida, how did you get home to Detroit? I assume you still had to take some flight to get to your final destination, so I am not entirely sure why you would get a refund, as you still flew, just not on your originally scheduled connecting flight.    Even if you had cancelled the flight (again, not sure how you would have done that if this was a connecting flight unless you booked it as a separate one way ticket) you would have gotten travel funds, not a refund.    --Jessica ... View more

Good to hear that you got it sorted out!   --Jessica ... View more

Unfortunately flight changes are just a reality of the airline industry right now. I had a flight get moved up an entire day ... nonstop flights are becoming a luxury on almost every route from Philly that I take: Vegas, Nashville, Chicago, Florida, anywhere ... very flew flights are nonstop anymore, and if I can find a nonstop flight, it's more expensive.    --Jessica ... View more

I use IOS and I've noticed this problem as well with the boarding pass not displaying on the lock screen, but I've gotten used to opening my Wallet to view it.    @Gd517 - if you set the app location setting to "always", does that resolve the issue and the boarding pass shows on the lock screen? I believe I have mine set to "while using the app" also, so this is something I will have to test out on my next flight.   --Jessica ... View more

Every airline has had massive changes and cancellations this past year due to COVID and less demand. It's not just Southwest - it's everyone. Domestic air travel was down about 50% this past year, and even more internationally, and they are predicting it won't get back to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or 2024.   https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2021/03/the-future-of-flight-in-a-post-covid-world.php    --Jessica ... View more

@gsking wrote: The coincidence of these two events is quite unlike the customer- friendly image I'd had of SWA.  I suspect a new bean counter got hired,  and is busy reworking the finances for short term gain with no regard for long term effects.  It does seem odd that both of these things (devaluation of RR points and the introduction of a Points subscription program) happened at about the same time. I don't think it's a coincidence.    --Jessica ... View more

Speaking of alcohol, have we heard any official news on when/if Southwest will accept expired drink coupons, and if so, what expiration dates they may accept going forward? For example, anything from March 2020 on ... ?   --Jessica ... View more

@chgoflyer wrote: The "cost" to me was only the annual fees, $99 and $125. This isn't even remotely comparable to purchasing points. See, I just don't agree with this line of reasoning. You say the cost to you is only the annual fees, but the reality is you are spending thousands of dollars in a relatively short amount of time to get those points with a RR credit card offer. Sure, you may not see it like that because it's money that you would "spend anyway" on a credit card, but that's my point. Not everyone has thousands of dollars to spend in a few months on CC purchases, and not everyone wants the burden of having an extra credit card just to get extra points that you could have gotten by spending much less by buying them outright on the SWA site or by using the new subscription service. Clearly I'm in the minority with this way of thinking, but that's how I see it.     Granted: I looked up a few SW Chase offers and there are several that will give you 40,000 points if you "only" spend $1000 in 3 months. Seems like an OK deal. The annual fee is $149 and you get a few other things like boarding upgrades and a $75 credit. But if you look at the current Buy Points offerings, which right now has a 75% bonus on purchases if you buy 15,000 or more, you can purchase 23,000 points with a 75% bonus of 17,250 (a total of 40,250 points) for $632.50. That's nearly a 40% savings when compared to what you have to spend with the credit card offer. Maybe I'm missing the forest for the trees, but I'd rather spend $600 vs $1000 to get the exact same amount of points, and not deal with having to manage a credit card.    And we've all read about the scenarios of those who sign up for these offers, don't read the terms & conditions and don't meet the minimum spend or other necessary requirements, and then they're stuck with a credit card and no points. Yeah, I'd rather just avoid this whole situation entirely 😉    --Jessica ... View more