Southwest Airlines Community

Yeah... that's a way unnecessary comment. We have enough divisiveness in this world as it is. I don't need more it coming from the flight attendant. ... View more

"  the system automatically starts offering you only the higher priced fares"   I'm not sure if that's for certain with SWA, but I've seen some odd things occur in this regard. When in doubt, I simply delete my browser history   At times, it's definitely made a difference. ... View more

I would be very interested in learning how many dollars in passenger airline credits go unused each year. The gift card industry has made a fortune off of unused and lost cards.   It would not be difficult for SWA to solve this issue and set up a wallet feature, like Alaska and many others have, since SWA already captures and owns all required data.   In the meantime, I’ll continue to treat SWA airline credits like any other form of currency I have but manually track SWA credits very closely. ... View more

When my wife and I fly together, we almost always bring our 2 small dogs (under 9 & 15 lbs) and we pay $200 roundtrip per-dog ($400). They stay in their carriers under the seat in front of us. They almost never see the light of day until after we are off the plane. They are well behaved and 99% of people never know we have our dogs with us.   However, if we were to scam the system and go the ESA route, our dogs would fly for free (saving us about $2,800 per-year), get preferential boarding, sit on our laps, and apparently we could let them lick the seat back tray (which, of course, we'd never dream of doing). We won't go the ESA route, but we can all see why people scam the system.   And people look at me funny when I pull out the Lysol wet wipes and wipe down the daylights out of the seat tray, seatbelt, armrests, headrest, and anything else our hands will be touching on the petrie dish, aka. airplane. ... View more

Liza, I think nearly all of us can appreciate why you are highly sensitive to this subject... as you should be. However, I hope it is clear that the problems being discussed are not, and certainly never should be, directed at responsible Service Animal owners like yourself.  Most SA owners I've met along the way are usually very responsible and conscientious. From my experience, most of the traveler frustration with pets onboard flights is primarily with Emotional Support Animal owners. As a person who flies quite a bit, I think we can both appreciate the issue due to the abuse we have all seen.   Best regards to you and your wonderful friend and Service Animal.     ... View more

This is great news! But I have one thing to say: PHX-to-LIH.   Thank you. @kknox wrote: As you may recall, last week Southwest announced our initial four airports in the Hawaiian Islands: Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu (HNL), Kahului Airport on Maui (OGG), Lihue Airport on Kauai (LIH), and Ellison Onizuka International Airport on the leeward side of The Island of Hawaii (KOA). Today, we have more news about Southwest’s intended service plans for Hawaii.    The initial gateway cities that will offer nonstop service (pending required regulatory approvals) to Hawaii are:    Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) Oakland Metropolitan Airport (OAK) Sacramento International Airport (SMF) San Diego International Airport (SAN)   While we aren’t yet ready to share specific nonstop routes or other flight details, please know those details will be reflected in the flight schedule that would publish following our ETOPS authorization from the FAA to operate Hawaii service.    Southwest President Tom Nealon made these announcements this morning at a community meeting with Hawaiian tourism, civic, and government leaders. He shared Southwest’s eventual interisland flights would come following the initial ramp-up of operations across the state’s four principal airports.   “Our plan for Hawaii requires us to share these initial details now so that our facilities in the airports will be ready for all that we intend to offer,” Nealon told a gathering at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki.      ... View more

This is more like a torturous tease-announcement 😉   GIT 'ER DUN!   I can't wait for you guys to get this launched! We have family on Kauai and are looking forward to flying SWA, courtesy of the Companion Pass, to get there.   And we'd really appreciate it if you'd give us Phoenician's some non-stop flights to the islands from PHX -- and yes, I know that's unlikely to happen, at least anytime soon. ... View more

Spot on. Now that 2 one-way flights are almost always the same price as a round trip flight, with SWA I've only been booking 1-way domestic flights for several years now and this is one of the reasons why -- especially since SWA doesn't charge a cancellation or change fee. ... View more

I thought I would also mention that if you have a business that's doing some reasonable revenue and has typical expenses, using the SWA business card and putting everything you can on it until you hit the annual spend to get the companion pass is a great way to go. Also, not only do you get points for every dollar you spend with the Visa card, for every $10,000 of spend placed on the SWA Premier card,  they also give you a bonus of 1,500 more points which actually go toward A-List status. Not to mention there's an annual bonus of either 3,000 or 6,000 points, depending on the SWA card(s) you have.   For us, thankfully that means we will likely qualify for the 2019 Companion Pass at about the end of this May. So, what we're also going to do is get the Chase Ink Business card this month. They are offering an 80,000 point sign up bonus. Plus, we do our business banking with Chase and our banker is giving us an additional 20,000 points -- for a crazy total of 100,000 points. You have to spend $5,000 on the card in the first 3 months, but the value of this is worth about $1,250 when redeemed for travel - or $1,000 when redeemed for cash. You can also transfer points to SWA on a 1:1 basis. They've also got some other nice perks like free cell phone insurance which will save our business about $1,800 a year right now (instead of paying about $11 per-month, per-phone), primary rental car insurance, 120 day purchase protection, + more. The annual fee is $95.   All that to say, if you have a business and manage your money reasonably well, these are exceptional deals. I should mention, however, this is all predicated upon you fully paying off your credit card each month -- so if you're not going to do that, forget about this program... all bets are off. However, if you do pay your Visa bill(s) in full each month a couple days before they are due, it means that you're effectively floating the bank's money for 30-60 days. How often do we get to stick it to the bank like that?   Ps. I promise I get nothing from Chase for sharing this information. I just realized that I could be sounding a bit like a shill for them 😉 ... View more

Note to others that if you applied for two of these at about the same time, you'd have to hit the minimum spend on both so you might want to stagger depending on your purchasing plans.   Great point. I forgot about that critical detail. ... View more

Not sure if things have changed since August 2017, but back then my wife applied for, and received, an individual Chase SWA Visa ("Plus") and got the 60,000 points.   About a week following the approval of the card above, she then also applied for, and received, a business Chase SWA Visa ("Premier Business) and received another 60,000 points. We then immediately qualified for the Companion Pass which we received within 30 days.   So, in our experience, the answer your question is "yes". However, this could have changed so probably best to contact SWA. Sorry not to be able to be more specific to your situation. ... View more