Southwest Airlines Community

"Please see the new format in the charts below. And let me know what you think!" I think I need some help finding the charts, Bill. Unrelated to your scheduling efforts, the revenue folks decided to zero out availability of any Wanna Get Away fares on December 1 (Thanksgiving Sunday) for numerous city pairs. This has the effect of blocking points redemption at a non-confiscatory rate for that date. If that was not the objective, and I sincerely hope it was not, some WGA fares need to be made available ASAP, even if the price needs to be set the same as the Anytime fare. ... View more

There are two very different Evolve configurations: - The 175-passenger 737-800 with the Sky Interior (nifty blue ceiling lighting), and - The 143-passenger retrofitted 737-700 The 737-800 configuration has good seat pitch and has received positive reviews on flyertalk.com's Southwest customer forum. I believe that this configuration was the original design application for Evolve. It is shown at http://www.blogsouthwest.com/video/southwest-debuts-737-800-warrior-one The 737-700 configuration is squeezed. It has received overwhelmingly negative reviews from customers on flyertalk.com. This configuration could damage Southwest's brand image of value-priced quality. It would help everyone here if people who post reviews state which of these configurations they are commenting on. Blue versus standard ceiling lighting makes it easy to tell the difference. ... View more

I am impressed that Southwest invested significant time and money into a purely transitional capability for AirTran customers. The conversion functionality, which was bound to be at least slightly difficult to understand, is well explained by the web pages. The process works intuitively, flawlessly, and immediately. It provides enough credit-combining and redemption flexibility to please just about everyone. Well done! ... View more

These geeks are some of the hundreds of website developers hoping to score a job rebuilding southwest.com. Although applicants are judged on the number of glitches they have discovered, the winners will soon learn that it's easier to criticize than to create! ... View more

"However, to honor our commitment to you from the old program, you may earn A-List or Companion Pass status based on either the rolling 12-months or calendar year." How often will the rolling calculation be done? If I take my 32nd flight today, when will I get A-list? Tomorrow? A week from today? A month from today? Only after I call and ask? Ideally, rolling qualification should be evaluated daily. Is the current scramble to fix the new web pages affecting the timeliness of rolling qualification? ... View more

We are working on having your progress tracked based on the rolling 12-month qualification displayed in your monthly Rapid Rewards Report e-mail. Does this mean there will be no web pages showing, for example, all credits earned during the previous 12 months? That would be a major loss in functionality. Regardless, I'm glad you used this forum to inform customers who were counting on rolling qualification and were puzzled why it's completely missing from their status screens. A simple message to look for that information in regular Rapid Rewards Report e-mails would be a big help and reduce phone calls. You also ought to urge A-Listers and Companion Pass holders to sign up for the Rapid Rewards Report e-mails if they have not already done so! ... View more

Why did Southwest change Rapid Rewards? One major reason that Southwest is downplaying is that the old Rapid Rewards was unreasonably generous to people who bought 8 sub-$100 round trips and earned a round trip across the country that would cost over $300. It was great while it lasted, but Southwest could not continue forever to give away the store this way. I wish they had come out and admitted this directly, but marketing practice is almost universally to tout a new product as better for everyone even if it's not. There were many good reasons for the change, but the problem (from their point of view) of buying short and redeeming long was a big thorn in their side. The web pages are attractive and reasonably well laid out when they are working. Starting people at zero points and hiding the carried over credit balances was probably a mistake, but the pages are structured with post-transition (2012 and on) use in mind. That makes the transition a little rough for users. I applaud Southwest for softening the transition for top customers by allowing rolling year qualification for Companion Pass and A-List status to continue in 2011. However this decision came in January, which must have been too late for the necessary web pages to be ready this week. As a result, everyone who was counting on rolling qualification is puzzled why it's completely missing from their status screens. All this and more is made clear at the Southwest forum at flyertalk.com, where you will find out about the "now you see them, now you don't" free drinks for A-List Preferred members. ... View more

>It is hardly a secret that a major reason for the change is to rectify the imbalance in benefits and attempt to attract more "Customers of Size", dollarwise. It's just a good business move. Southwest would have been better off to present the change this directly: Here's why it makes sense for us, and here's what we did to make the change easier on you. Here's who wins, here's who loses, and here's why we needed to reduce the program's generosity to people buying $39 tickets. There are already well over 500 customer posts on Rapid Rewards 2.0, including advice on why and how you should try to reach 100 credits before March 1, at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/southwest-rapid-rewards-501/ nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

>There are far too many details of our new program for me to mention here Definitely. We have posted most of the details and started a lively discussion from the customer's point of view at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/southwest-rapid-rewards/1168741-rapid-rewards-2-0-begins-march-1-2011-a.html nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Bring back Diet Dr. Pepper, please! Or you could switch the Coke Zero to Cherry Coke Zero for a decent facsimile. ... View more

When management at my company sent everyone home from work, I spent the entire afternoon watching the news and booking $29 fares online for my travel over the next several months. I wasn't going to let terrorists keep me down. Literally. When flights resumed on September 14, I was on one of them.The passengers were few in number that day, but we would have been more than a match for any terrorists. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

To those who believe that Southwest should just raise fares by $5, rather than offering automatic check-in for $10, let's look at this from the standpoint of customer value. A $5 price increase costs everyone the same amount of money and does not change the perceived value of the product. Sales will decrease a little bit according to the rule of supply and demand. Some customers find online check-in easy and convenient. Perhaps they work at a computer or have a mobile device, so that they are rarely away from the computer at the 24-hour mark. Some customers don't really care what seat they get, especially for short flights. The $10 optional fee (yes, I'm not afraid to use the F-word here) allows customers in these categories to keep paying the same price, whereas the $5 price increase would cost them $5. Some customers are picky about the seat they get and competitive about getting a low boarding pass number. These people will be happy to pay the $10 fee, because it delivers more than $10 of value to them. The customers who value the feature pay for it without burdening the customers who don't. That's efficient pricing, delivering more value per dollar on average to customers with diverse preferences. Southwest began as "one size fits all", but it need not remain that way. The preceding logic applies somewhat to baggage fees, but the analogy is not precise. Checked baggage is more a necessity than a preference. Everyone I know already prefers to avoid checking bags if at all possible. It takes extra time and effort to check the bag and to retrieve it. Therefore a baggage fee would merely add a financial penalty to the time penalty. No customer value is created by baggage fees. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

This is getting back to the old debate between open seating and assigned seating. If you buy your tickets way in advance and don't change them, assigned seating is clearly superior for you. If you buy less than a week before travel, you will do MUCH better with open seating. As another poster said, you simply can't get a assigned seats together for a family unless you book pretty far ahead. You have to go to the gate early and try for the seats that were held back for airport assignment. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses, and no system is superior to the others in every respect. I have a feeling that Southwest's system with EarlyBird will work out just fine, and that a year from now it will be seen as a non-issue. Just as look at how the furor over mid-boarding for families settled down once people had a chance to experience it and realize that their fears were inflated. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

sandy, EarlyBird customers will almost never have a chance to try to save the exit row. Business Select customers or A-listers will take those seats virtually every time. I'm hoping that Flight Attendants will keep seat saving to a minimum and prohibit it anywhere near the front of the plane. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Call it "B List". :) OK, make it "A-minus" List. 🙂 :) Now we know how much A-List status is worth: $10 per flight. More motivation to reach the 32-flight threshold. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

The most comprehensive guide on Southwest and Rapid Rewards from a customer perspective is available online at http://www.flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Southwest_Rapid_Rewards It's free to access and in Wiki form, so you can even add your own insights if you like. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

US labor law, specifically McCaskill-Bond, forces binding arbitration if the two pilots' unions can't agree. Southwest was correct to refuse that risk, requiring an agreement up front. Does Republic now have the option to sell gates and 737's to Southwest with no strings attached? This might cost more money than Southwest's bid, but it might be a win-win for Republic and Southwest. It would also be a huge loss for the Frontier pilots who gambled that Republic would provide better job security than Southwest. Fuel prices are heading up again, and I wonder whether customers will keep buying tickets on a carrier with nothing stronger than Republic backing it. It could be a difficult fall for Frontier and the rest of Republic. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Janet, what you experienced is not at all unusual. When it comes to peak holiday flights, Southwest knows they are going to sell out at relatively high fares, so you will almost never see a deep discount. Spring Break to Florida, probably flying on Friday and Sunday although you don't specify, certainly qualifies as peak. Those flights WILL sell out. Legacy airlines often sell cheap fares months ahead for these peak holidy flights. This seems to be foolish on the part of the legacy airlines, but you might as well take advantage of it. But don't blame Southwest. The apparent fact that legacy airlines are making a bad business decision doesn't mean Southwest should copy them. The moral of this story is to buy your Wednesday and Sunday Thanksgiving tickets from a legacy airline if you are certain you won't need to change anything or cancel the trip. Since you have bought Southwest tickets, I strongly suggest that you re-price your itinerary 12 weeks before travel, then 8 weeks, 6 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 weeks. You won't ever get a Ding fare for a peak holiday date like this, but if sales are slower than expected the lower-fare "buckets" may open up. Also: be sure to check availability for one seat only! If you ask for 4 tickets and the lower bucket has only 3 left, you won't get any of those 3. You'll get all 4 at the higher price. It's a system limitation. Buy one seat at a time if the price is better that way. Southwest gives you a 24-hour period during which you can cancel for a full refund if you used a credit card to pay. So if you find a cheaper seat or two, you can just rebook today and cancel the old reservation and request the refund. The FAQ on FlyerTalk has all this information and much, much more: http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Southwest_Rapid_Rewards nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

How about adding a section to blogsouthwest containing a complete photographic copy of everything that's on all the walls at HQ? I'm thinking a virtual wall, walkable by mouse. It would take a professional photographer and a lot of time from the blog team, but the result would be overwhelming. ... View more

Paula, you and Brian make it look so easy, even if it's not. Congratulations! And a hearty Thank You to all the employees who have made this place so special. ... View more

Bill, you make all that hard work sound like fun! I understand that compressing all the departures into a smaller fraction of the day would reduce the maximum number of flights you can operate with a given number of aircraft. That's a factor I had not considered before. Are you keeping more aircraft than usual in reserve, completely unscheduled? I believe that would be prudent given the high probability that some major airline will suddenly shut down and leave a gaping hole in the country's air travel network. Assuming you do have some reserve aircraft, are your people able to put together a reasonably efficient schedule overnight if another carrier shuts down? That would seem almost impossible. And it only gets worse if you have to "steal" aircraft from the existing schedule. How about a blog post on your preparations for that middle of the night phone call? ... View more

Wow, Bill I was impressed to see you quoted in Wednesday's WSJ about the DEN expansion. You could have kidded them that DEN was Southwest's new frontier. ;)] Humor aside, Frontier is a good airline but today's cost environment will likely prove just too hard for them. Better for Southwest to have alternate service in place already than to have to rush to establish it. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Under normal circumstances, impatient people would just book with another airline. But this year, nobody knows which airlines will suddenly shut down. That makes it much safer to book with Southwest, even before you consider Southwest's lack of any penalty for canceling or changing your ticket. Southwest is going to get a lot of new business this year as customers begin to choose an airline based on solvency first, price second. nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Bill, I apologize for being intemperate earlier. I'm normally as mild mannered as you are. And I really am a fan of Southwest and a fan of yours. Others on FlyerTalk have researched seat availability to Hawaii, and their results lead me to believe that Southwest's unattainable objective was rebooking at reasonable cost, not simply rebooking at any price. Had the rebooking objective been stated as subject to this cost constraint and to the acceptability (in the customer's opinion) of connection arrangements, people would have immediately understood. I certainly would not have argued with the decision had it been explained this way. One FlyerTalker noted that AA was offering discounted rates for stranded ATA passengers booked on flights up until May 3rd. After that date, costs for AA tickets presumably went way up. This FlyerTalker speculated that the airlines with Hawaii service decided to charge market prices beyond May 3, and that if Southwest attempted to negotiate a volume discount it was unsuccessful. Bottom line: If this is close to a correct explanation, I agree that Southwest did the best it reasonably could. In fact, one important reason I believe this explanation to be close to the mark is that I trust Southwest to make good decisions. If there's one thing you can count on Bill Owen for, it's finding the best solution to a constrained problem. So why didn't Southwest just come right out and state the decision this way? That I can't explain, except that sometimes in the heat of the battle one can't see the big picture that outsiders see. It's easy to take one's own level of knowledge for granted and forget that others do not have that familiarity with the constraints of the problem. So Bill, I'd still like to agree to agree, if you are agreeable. ;) nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum ... View more

Bill, thank you for your gracious reply to my post. Your explanations are beginning to sink in. If I'm still unsure of all the facts, it's a cinch that many others are also unsure. You wrote: >if you refer back to the original press release we specifically stated that à ... View more

Bill Owen wrote: "While we have successfully reaccommodated the majority of our Customers traveling between now and May 3, we have also realized that the only realistic option as we go forward into peak travel season is to give full refunds on existing purchased tickets. As we examined reaccomodation options beyond May 3, it became readily apparent that, given the significant reduction in capacity between the Mainland and Hawaii after the discontinuation of both ATA and Aloha Airlines, there were simply too few seats left available to offer all of our Customers suitable rebooking options." Bill, were you trying to say that the number of people booked per day for the summer months was much greater than the number per day for April, exceeding the total number of unsold seats? Even though the summer travel season was two full months away and many people don't book that far ahead? And even though Southwest had not sold any tickets at all for travel after August 22? This would seem to be the only way that it would be literally impossible (as opposed to merely expensive) to find seats for everyone in May-August even though Southwest had found seats for everyone in April. Or were you saying that the fares were much higher in the peak travel season and therefore less affordable? Or were you saying both, that more passengers per day needed to be accommodated at higher fares each, and many would still face sold-out flights? Did Southwest unsuccessfully attempt to negotiate a volume discount from UA or HA? Was that the last straw? If sufficient seats didn't exist at any price, why not rebook as many as you could, based on original booking date? Nobody could then criticize Southwest for not doing everything it could. I could have respected even a decision that Southwest would add a maximum of $400 per person to the ATA fare, and that the customer would have to pay the rest. The idea that rebooking has to be offered to everyone or nobody is silly. Every day Southwest boards standby passengers while others are left behind for a later flight or another day. It's first-come, first-served, and everybody understands that. Do you cancel a flight when it's oversold, leaving everyone behind rather than just the last few people? Of course not. Bill, your statement leaves customers like me guessing as to Southwest's precise motivation. The only time that outcome makes sense is when the explanation would confirm the worst suspicions. Otherwise it's beneficial to make your case as clearly as possible, leaving no room for incorrect inferences. IMHO, a clear and direct exposition of the problem, complete with numbers of seats and dollar cost estimates, could have changed quite a few minds and retained most of the trust that has been lost. When trust is at issue, the solution is openness. ... View more

The people over at flyertalk, including me, have been quite critical of Southwest in this situation. And we are Southwest's biggest fans. It was natural for Southwest's Employees to jump in and help out. It was natural for all of them to have a "can do" attitude and to have the confidence that the top brass would back them up. Hasn't it always worked that way? What was not natural was for the top brass to count the cost and pull the rug out from under Southwest's Employees who were doing the right thing, and at the same time from under Southwest Customers who had had complete confidence that Southwest would protect them. Bill, feel free to correct me if my inferences here are wrong. I'm only a Customer, after all. This would have stung a lot less if top management had permitted a direct explanation that the decision not to protect customers past May 3 was a matter of cost, pure and simple, and if they had given us a dollar figure. Top management gets paid to take these hits on the chin for Employees. They are supposed to have balls. Instead, they obfuscated the reason and delegated the spin to the same outstanding Employees they just pulled the rug out from under! I doubt that this situation would have developed in the same way under Herb. I would still have been disappointed, but I could have respected an explicit admission that the originally intended protection had become too expensive to offer consistently with Southwest's obligation to its shareholders. Incidentally, I am one of those shareholders. I didn't have a trip booked to Hawaii. Purely as a shareholder, I believe that the trust earned over decades and squandered here will cost Southwest more than the $10 million or so, give or take a factor of two, that I'm guessing Southwest would have spent to save everyone's trips. Within the airline industry, Southwest is one of very few companies with a truly loyal following. That's a precious asset. Sometimes top management has to do the right thing for the company's long-run interest even if Wall Street will scream about the next quarterly earnings report. Wall Street can't measure loyalty so they think it doesn't exist. They are wrong. Don't let them intimidate you into making a mistake like this again. ... View more

You are now free to believe whatever version of these events fits your preconceived notions. Version 1: Out of control greedy corporation compromises safety to save a buck. Their planes are going to start falling out of the sky any day now. It's only by sheer luck that this hasn't ever happened in the 37-year history of the airline. The FAA, Congress, and media are all on the side of the angels, fighting this evil corporation. Version 2: Out of control FAA tells Southwest that it's OK to follow Boeing's assessment and continue to fly for 10 days while inspecting, because even a 4-inch crack won't come close to bringing a plane down. FAA feels the heat from a politician connected to a competing airline and decides to deflect attention to Southwest by reversing this earlier decision. Motivated only by ratings, media fans the flames of this auto-da-fe. Gullible viewers believe the media version. Take your pick of these, or make up your own version. It's a fun game. Everyone can play! ... View more

Andrea, thanks for the great news that Southwest's Ops Agents are enforcing the sequence. The poles with the numbers mark your correct position, so you don't need to ask others what numbers they have in order to find your correct place. If after knowing that you still prefer to try boarding out of sequence then you really do belong on another airline. What many people here don't yet realize is that slots A1-A15 are normally almost empty. Those are the Business Select slots that mostly go unsold. So the A20 you saw was actually in the first 5 mini-group of non-Business Select passengers. The Ops Agent did it exactly right. It's a good system. Learn it and you'll love it. One recommendation to Southwest from this customer: Go ahead and ratchet down the count of Business Select slots sooner rather than later. You can let it grow later. The reason is to eliminate the large gap (nearly empty A1-A15 positions) that confuses newbies and tempts line jumpers. Operational considerations outweigh potential but unlikely revenue, at least for now. ... View more

If you buy your ticket far in advance and don't mind paying $100 if you need to cancel or change it, legacy carriers may fit you better. If you buy your ticket within a few days of travel, and pay top fare, a legacy carriers will give you a middle seat if they are able to assign you a seat at all. Southwest wants to attract more of these high-fare late-booking passengers by guaranteeing them something other than a middle seat. The more of these passengers Southwest can attract, the lower Southwest can keep the discount fares for the rest of us. Giving the best seats to the customers paying the lowest fares doesn't make business sense from any angle. I'm surprised the legacy carriers haven't figured this out, but they always have been slow on the uptake. ... View more