Southwest Airlines Community

1- 102 million bags 2 - 1,160,699 flights 3 - 2,147,000 hours and 730,079,671 miles = 29318 times around the Earth. 4 - 7,100,000 tickets sold 4 - 32,000,000 boarding passes issued by agents 5 - 46,000,000 boarding passes printed at home. 24,900,000 boarding passes printed at kiosks 6 - 132,000,000 phone calls 7 - 54,800 letters 8 - 181,000,000 pounds of cargo ... View more

People here seem to be under the illusion that fares can remain the same even though fuel prices have doubled. Get real, people. Extra money has to come from somewhere. Would you rather pay all the extra on your tickets or would you rather have business travelers carry most of the increase? You know and I know that we buy the cheapest tickets we can find. Southwest knows it too. Southwest is creatively attempting to keep leisure fares down as much as possible in the face of high fuel prices. Cut them some slacK: they are doing it for your own good. I'd rather be able to afford a flight as a "second-class citizen" then to have to stay home because I couldn't afford to travel on the "everyone is equal" airline. The latter is not what I'd call "Freedom to Fly". Barbara Watson wrote: "For many of us, it's not about being thrifty; it's about whether we can afford to fly at all." To Barbara I say: That is exactly why Business Select is your friend, not your enemy. Money collected from Business Select customers is money that doesn't have to come out of your pocket. That money has to come from somewhere. People who are complaining about A's no longer being affordable would be the first ones to complain about a massive increase in leisure fares in the absence of a program like Business Select. They need to get a grip on financial reality. The status quo is not an option with oil at $98. It's just not. On another subject, Gale Thomssen complained about limited availability and vowed to switch airlines. Gale, do you have any idea how difficult it has become to redeem a saver award on any airline other than Southwest or JetBlue? It's a scandal. We'd always like better availability, especially on Fridays and Sundays, but Southwest's award tickets are the most usable in the industry. Ask anyone at flyertalk.com and they'll tell you the same. One other suggestion: award availability sometimes improves in the last week or so before a flight. But for Thanksgiving and Christmas you're not going to get the peak travel dates you want. ... View more