Southwest Airlines Community

This is a real problem, and it doesn't seem to be fair.  I recently experienced this for the first time ever in all the years I have been flying for business or leisure.  I certainly understand that flights change and sometimes flights are cancelled due to COVID, but I've found that what has happened to my flight itinerary is not that simple.  My sisters and I booked flights to California, and we had to coordinate since we are coming from different parts of the country.  A couple of months ago we got changes to our itineraries.  We all had to make changes so that we were once again arriving at the same time.  Over the next few weeks we continued to get notifications of changes.  We decided to wait to make changes or we would be changing our flights constantly.  Finally with two weeks to go until our flight we got on a conference call to re-coordinate our flights.  In looking at our original itineraries we discovered that none of our original flights/times had been cancelled, we had simply been bumped to less desirable flights - i.e. we were now on multiple connections instead of our original nonstop flight.  AND, when we tried to change to better flights so we could arrive at the same time, those new flights were more expensive, so now we would have to pay more to get a comparable flight to what we had already booked and paid for.  After an hour of trying to configure our flights, I hopped on American Airlines and found non-stop flights for only a little more than it was going to cost us to "upgrade" to better flights on Southwest (with no guarantee they wouldn't continue to mess with our flights).  So, we cancelled our Southwest flight for credits and booked on American.  What a mess!  Why is Southwest allowed to bump me from a flight that I have paid for and put me on a different flight that does not fit with my original flight plan?  Those of you who are belittling those of us having this problem need to beware.  Next time you think you have a trip planned - you may get a big surprise at the last minute. ... View more