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Happy magnesium southwest.com!

jhallen
Adventurer C
12 is the atomic number for magnesium and on March 17, southwest.com celebrates 12 years! Well almost. It was actually www.iflyswa.com back in 1995. Can that much really happen in 12 years? Well, we now have almost 73% of our revenues generated from southwest.com and lead the airline industry in online revenue. Each month southwest.com has on average 10 million unique visitors according to Nielson Net Ratings (06) and generates over 6 million Click 'n Save e-mails weekly. We've added the ability to book cars, hotels, cruises, shuttles, theme park tickets, and gift cards! Customers are able to checkin online 24 hours in advance, check their flight status and even checkin through web-enabled mobile devices. Not bad. In 12 years, I've gotten married and bought a house. OK and probably gained a few pounds.
20 Comments
drew
Adventurer B
Can we replace the current website with the old "Home Gate," if only for a day? 😄
FriendofBlogBoy
Frequent Flyer B
Jill, Congratulations a dozen times! Over the years, I've enjoyed the upgrades and added features to the website, and in my opinion, it is one of the most user-friendly airline sites I've used. On a fairly regular basis, I've had out of town guests come to Dallas on other airlines (GASP) when traveling from cities not served by Southwest, and so I wind up going to their websites, too. It is always a chore to find the right places to click on the other ones, and a few of them make you jump through hoops just to print boarding passes. But not www.southwest.com! It is great -- please keep up the fantastic job! Kim 🙂
Dave511
Explorer B
Take a look back in time of the archived homepage of iflyswa.com from 11/1996 http://web.archive.org/web/19961106122431/http://iflyswa.com/ Old skool!
Mary_-_Loyal_Cu
Explorer C
Happy 12th Southwest.com!! I still access via Iflyswa.com to this day. In 12 years, I also got married, bought a house, and gained weight! Speaking of anniversaries, my husband and I will be celebrating our 5th year in May. Thank you Southwest for gathering my family safely to Florida so they could attend my wedding. We saved all our rapid rewards tickets for a whole year and flew ourselves, 4 relatives in Northern CA, 3 from Southern CA, and 1 from Dallas to our wedding. I thank you Southwest for allowing me to move about the country. You have truly made my life better. Keep up the good work.
Steve211
Explorer C
happy 12 years
Steve211
Explorer C
I wish SWA woould improve their service
drew
Adventurer B
Steve, Perhaps you can be more specific?
Tommy_Blog2
Explorer B
I like how SWA.com has started to evolve/update the website, but one question. When is the web team going to take the enhancements we see on the main landing page and incorporate them throughout the website? Hopefully soon. I also agree with one of the bloggers that posted a comment above, SWA.com is by far one of the easiest (if not the easiest) airline travel website to use in cyberspace. Thank you for making the website so functional and easy to use. tommyblog
joe-mdw-plane-d
Frequent Flyer C
Congrats Mary on 5 years. I also got married, built our house and gained weight! We will be celebrating 6 years in July. On the 6th! Made with real fruit juice. Ding! boy Joe Friedmann
Francisco_Delga1
Adventurer A
Steve, If you were running Southwest how would you improve their service?? let me tell you what Southwest did for me yesterday.. I am active duty military and i will be going on a deployment soon. When i arrived in Albuquerque all of my Southwest friends greeted me with balloons, banners, gifts and my family. They went out of their way to make sure that my trip home would be a memorable experience. Flying from San Diego to ABQ was a real treat, everyone from the ground crew to the inflight crew was helpful but kept most of us laughing with their inflight jokes. On top of that i earned double credit since i flew out of California and on top of that total round trip airfare $207.00. I doubt that any other airlines would have gone out of their way to do this. Now back to the original topic,,,, CONGRATS ON YOUR WEBPAGE!!!!!!! I miss the home gate as well but i know that the new website is just as good. here is to 12 more years.. USS BLOG BOY
Jim13
Adventurer C
You know, if it wasn't for southwest.com, my wife and I might not have married. You see, she lived in Tulsa and I live in El Paso. (We met in the Phoenix airport.) Back in 1998 when we started dating, Southwest was offering two credits for each flight booked online. Well, to get from El Paso to Tulsa (or vice-versa) you had no choice but to change planes in Dallas. It was often actually cheaper to book a round trip from ELP to DAL, then another round trip from DAL to TUL. Of course, this also had the side benefit of doubling the already doubled RR credits. So, it was: ELP --> DAL - 2 RR Segments DAL --> TUL - 2 more RR Segments A wonderful weekend (or longer), then TUL --> DAL - Yet another 2 RR Segments DAL --> ELP - A final 2 more RR Segments. Wow! One round trip and there were eight credits in my account. Another round trip and we had a free round trip! And of course, back in those days the free round trip had no capacity controls, so it was often a matter of waking up one morning and deciding to head to Tulsa. Or Tulsa headed to El Paso. Then add in the fare sales (this was long before Ding), sometimes as low as $78 RT ELP to DAL and $38 RT DAL to TUL , and I was buying advance tickets for almost every weekend. I was in Love. (Still am!) Of course, with the eight credits per trip, it was not long until I received my first companion pass. With a pocket full of free trips and a companion pass, she could fly down here and we could fly anywhere (San Diego was a favorite) for nothing! Well, we've been married since late 2000, I might travel nine times a year now instead of three or four times a month. The companion pass is long gone, but our Love is still there. Southwest.com (and its attendant loopholes back then) gave us the chance to live 700 miles apart, yet see each other two or three times a month. Could our romance have lasted without SWA? Maybe. But Southwest Airlines and Southwest.com made sure we were able to remain close enough, to see each other often enough, to guarantee the romance lasted. A week from Monday (on March 26) marks the ninth anniversary of the day we met in Phoenix. That means a week from Tuesday marks the beginning of our tenth year together. All thanks to Southwest.
pcerda
Adventurer B
My wife and I hit 3 years this Tuesday the 20th. I've gained WAY too many pounds (and pant sizes) in that time, and will have a few more after our dinner on Tuesday or Wednesday (depending on our schedules). And steve, any particular areas we can improve on? No animals, flight attendants, or non-revenue space available passengers were harmed in this blogging.
Greg5
Explorer C
iam kinda new to this swa thing! have a southwest question and don't know where else to ask aSWA fans! And that is does SWA let you book multi citiy trips like for example Dulles to Chicago for a few days and then chicago to san diego then back home to washington dulles?
Mary9
Explorer A
Greg, If you click on book travel you can select to depart from Dulles arrive Chicago return to San diego in one reservation. The return San Diego back to Dulles would have to be booked in a 2nd reservation. Since most markets have one way pricing you should be able to get the best price this way.
pcerda
Adventurer B
Greg...ABSOLUTELY! Call us....1.800.iflyswa!
Patricia_Platt
Explorer C
It's time to stop giving out peanuts! Don't you know that peanuts are the top allergen in America? The fumes really bother many of us allergic folks.
Chris19
Explorer C
I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but if not maybe you could pass on this 'song of praise' to the right guys... I just read the New York Times piece about Fred Taylor and his hand-crafted, witty and sincere letters of apology to customers when things don't go as they should - I just have to say, "brilliant". This really is a benchmark for how corporations should do the simple things right. As a business copywriter (and no, this isn't a pitch for work!) I've spent years trying to persuade clients to do this kind of stuff - not always successfully, I might add. I'd also add that having spent far too many years as a frequent flyer (now no longer, thank goodness), one of the few standout flights - ie one that I can actually remember at all - was with SWA sometime in the 80s, someplace in Arizona I think, maybe Phoenix. I just remember it as being for once a pleasure rather than a necessary ordeal. I'm full of admiration. Yrs, a Brit copywriter living in remote rural France...Chris G.
Vicki4
Explorer C
Happy Anniversary, Southwest.com! My hubby and I observed this anniversary by going online last night (on March 17th) and purchasing a couple of round-trip tickets. We're looking forward to a nice little flight from MCO to BNA and back again! We LUV flying with SWA! I also just read Jeff Bailey's article on Fred Taylor and SWA and their remarkable customer service techniques. SWA is our air carrier of choice, and it makes me proud just to be a passenger. Thanks for running an excellent company!
FriendofBlogBoy
Frequent Flyer B
Jim, What a great story! Thanks for posting that for us. Ya know, anytime I see something start with an intro like that ("You know, if it wasnÃ
Frank_Kiska
Explorer C
I am a good customer of Southwest flying out of BWI. Before I just leave you guys flat without saying goodbye I have to tell you why. We have a corporate travel guideline which limits us to +$200 vs. the lowest priced fares. This was never an issue until recently and I find I can no longer comply with our travel policy using Southwest. Today I'm trying to book Las Vegas and Delta and American are over $200 less. What gives? I'm a sales director myself and would love to get a "heads up" from a long standing, departing customer. It's been great. BRgds, Frank