Southwest Airlines Community

I've been learning about the airline industry for awhile for my own interest and to possibly pursue a career in the industry. The plane is not at the wrong gate. There are no wrong gates, sometimes airlines assign gates ahead of time so customers can expect where they need to go, but due to delays for arriving and departing flights, sometimes airlines have to change gates at the last minute. So, it's not really a wrong gate, but not the scheduled/planned gate.    Also, the baggage handlers don't just put bags on a plane, they scan the bags to make sure they're putting it on the correct flight. The ground crew very likely know of the gate change before passengers do and there's also the ramp supervisor who's in charge of getting flights out on time who knows where the plane is going and is in communication with gate agents.    There's an entire coordinated dance that goes on to get every flight out on time. Deplane, unload bags, clean aircraft, refuel, unload lavatory waste, restock food/snacks, load bags, load passengers, pushback. ... View more

Best time to book domestic flights is three weeks before departure as airlines want to fill the plane so prices will tend to be cheaper. This sometimes depends on the origin/destination, so maybe anywhere from 3-6 weeks before departure. This also lowers the risk of flight schedules changing. ... View more

You can always search the TSA site for what's allowed for both carry-on and checked luggage!   https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/all ... View more

Did you tell the airline you had explosive in the checked bag. Normally with these kinds of dangerous things even if their allowed in checked bags, the airline has to know so they can put the information into the barcode on the bag tag, so the when it goes through screening, the explosives would be expected rather than a surprise.    But like others said, if this happened back in September, you're not going to have much luck. ... View more

One piece of information about the airline industry is that there are specific dates when airlines submit schedules to airports and this can be different from when they make flights available to purchase. This is why it can be troublesome if you book a ticket too far in advance because the schedule on the airline's website is what they expect their schedule to be, but airlines are always evaluating routes and cities based on supply and demand of passengers and even when passengers want to fly, so sometimes they change the schedule. Airlines will even trade their slots with other airlines if it's past the schedule submission deadline.    Airlines are given certain slots based on their historical flight operations, but sometimes the airline decides to change flight time or even drop the airport all together or add destinations all of which affect flight schedules across their network.   Here is a link with more information, it's pretty long, but worth a skim or "command/control F" to learn at least a little bit. http://www.wwacg.org/up/files/DocsWSG/WORLWIDE_SCHEDULING_GUIDELINES/WSG2-Jul00.pdf   ... View more

Basically every thing you described is a typical day in the airline industry except for maybe the pee soaked lavatory. Think about it. This is an industry where we're trying to get a big hunk of metal safely into the sky that's loaded with civilians tens of thousands of times every single day just in our country. There's bound to be delays like this, it's just the nature of the business. Airports are in the process of renovations to handle the larger number of passengers than they were built for. So, the nature of the business combined with the renovations and airports with exceeded capacity, these things are bound to happen. So, if anything, what you experienced for the most part is an effect of the airport infrastructure and not the airline.   As for the lavatory, if you were the first one to use it, then sure that's on Southwest's cleaners. However, it's likely someone used it before you and they trashed the place. Flight attendants don't normally clean those kinds of messes because they need to keep their hands sanitary to serve food and beverages to the passengers. ... View more

Yea, that or limit it to one drink per person, but then you might run the risk of people bar hopping at the larger airports. Who even wants to get drunk before a flight anyway, that always baffles me. ... View more

There's instructions in the information packet in the seat back pocket. The same one that has all the snacks and beverages. You technically connect to the inflight WiFi, but there's no need to pay for internet. ... View more

Airline have been adding frequencies and even new destinations across the board with the anticipation of busy summer leisure travel.  Southwest has added many new destinations: Miami, Sarasota, Destin-Fort Walton, Steamboat, Montrose/Telluride, Chicago-Ohare, Houston George Bush, Bozeman, Santa Barbara, Fresno, Myrtle Beach with Eugene, OR starting later this year and Jackson, MS resuming in a few days. Other airlines as well have added frequencies. There are many aviation specific news places out there. The Points Guy, Airways Magazine, etc and you can read all about that stuff or you can periodically look at airline's newsroom page. For Southwest, it's swamedia.com ... View more

Southwest allows you to search flight status by flight number and it shows all the flights under that flight number from my understanding/experience. ... View more

Given that Southwest has been adding a lot of Saturday only leisure service recently, this is definitely a possibility, I'm just not sure if they would do it with Hawaii due to the distance and absolute need to fill planes. So, if anything, they'd be both seasonal and Saturday only, except for maybe FAT, but RNO, BOI, and GEG maybe even ABQ would be season IMO. I'm just not sure this will happen unless Southwest provides connections through these smaller airports to/from Hawaii. With the MAX, other less than daily options could include SAT, AUS, COS possibly DEN, DAL but those could be daily ... View more

I second what TheMiddleSeat said and would say it's possible! Personally I think there are many other airports more likely to see Southwest service than Flagstaff. ... View more

The way Southwest has been expanding recently, it's definitely a possibility, however, I believe there are many other airports that are more likely to see Southwest service. ... View more

I know this is well after your project, but I think Southwest should try to enter Canada though right now they are trying to serve Canada with Buffalo NY (Toronto) and their intent to serve Bellingham WA (Vancouver). Canada has a lot of higher fees for landing, overflight, and for general use fees (passengers needing to use services such as customs). I would say: Top Focuses - more leisure oriented Calgary for Banff  -served from Denver, Chicago, Oakland, Vegas, seasonally to Phoenix Vancouver for Canadian Rockies/Vancouver itself -served from Denver, Oakland, Vegas, seasonally to Phoenix   Secondary focuses Toronto -served from Baltimore, Chicago, Vegas* seasonally to Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa Montreal -served from Baltimore, Chicago, Vegas* seasonally to Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa I believe these to be slightly more business oriented still with significant tourism though. *Saturday only service ... View more

Basically, Southwest wants to be able to keep their plane available to fly the rest of their flights minus Colorado. The big 3 take the risk, Southwest didn't want to. It is frustrating but it's a business decision to not risk the rest of their flight schedule being affected. ... View more

Due to how Southwest operates as more of point to point carrier, I think Columbus has a lot of Saturday/Sunday only flights for leisure travel and daily to their main airports of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Nashville, St. Louis ... View more

There's probably not enough demand from Iowa to New York and vice versa for several reasons. But if you can prove otherwise, definitely shoot Southwest a message on social media or through the contact us page. ... View more

I think XNA could definitely be a future destination for Southwest, but don't take my word for it! ... View more

It is weird that Southwest doesn't have PHL-LAS service and honestly weird that AA doesn't even fly to Tulsa from PHL. ... View more

I think Baton Rouge is definitely a possibility, but I can't say if it'll ever happen. I personally think there's a lot of growth opportunity for Southwest with their already extensive domestic network. ... View more

I personally don't recall a direct flight between Albuquerque and El Paso, but I echo what dfwskier said. ... View more

My guess is that they just hadn't updated their inflight map yet to add/remove cities that they serve. ... View more

I would second what dfwskier said, and I would also say that flight schedule changes are in the terms & conditions that you agree to when purchasing a ticket. Basically every time you buy a plane ticket, you agree that the flight schedule could change including from a nonstop to stopover flight. I just don't know why Southwest wouldn't just automatically reschedule people to the new nonstop time. Sometimes it makes sense and Southwest keeps your original departure time other times it goes from an evening departure to a morning departure, but that's usually on once a day routes. ... View more

In my opinion, this is a long shot due to only having charter service. There are many other airports much more suited and more likely to see Southwest service. ... View more

That's interesting, in my personal opinion and observation, this doesn't fit Southwest's business model, so it probably wouldn't be them to do this kind of a thing. If anyone is doing Fairbanks to Hawaii, it would probably be Alaska Airlines, but I don't see why a stop in Anchorage would be so bad.  ... View more

Don't take my word on this, but I think it's a possibility that Southwest could return to Newark when the terminal renovation projects are done, but in the meantime, Southwest looks to be focusing on some smaller and cheaper airports with sufficient demand to make a profit.  ... View more

It's definitely something to wish for! But like others said, this is a community of customers, so no one will be able to give you an answer until after Southwest publicly announces something and that is if they do. Moline seems promising, but IMO there are many other destinations that southwest will likely favor over Moline. ... View more

Southwest has a flight schedule search page where you can search, well flight schedules: https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-schedules/results.html?departureDate=2021-06-26&destinationAirportCode=BWI&originationAirportCode=OAK&scheduleViewType=weekly&timeOfDay=ALL_DAY   I did a search and found it odd that southwest only had four flights schedules for the whole summer between Oakland and Baltimore. Not sure why that is, but here are the days that I found with nonstop flights: June 22, 23, 24, 30 ... View more

I think all if not most of the Hawaii flights are year round, so there should be flights to HNL, KOA, LIH and OGG ... View more