Southwest Airlines had a ‘big bang’ on May 28th. They started charging for checked bags. They started expiring travel credits. And there are all sorts of Easter Eggs in the negative changes the airline is making, like charging a fee for curbside check-in (a change the airline never announced) after firing all of their skycaps.
It’s unclear whether this is another unannounced negative change, or just that Southwest’s IT systems weren’t up for making their planned changes correctly, but you can no longer change the outbound portion of a ticket without affecting the return and this appears even to impact same day flight changes.
- Changing the outbound portion of a pre-May 28th ‘Wanna Get Away’ reservation will impose basic economy restrictions on the return.
- Even doing a same day flight change to the outbound portion of a trip causes the return to become basic economy, even though those restrictions aren’t supposed to apply to tickets purchased prior to May 28.
- Making a change, even a same day change, means that if you cancel the return your travel credit will have an expiration date instead of the promised credits not expiring that should apply to all pre-May 28th reservations.
- In fact, if you bought your tickets six months ago, and the change imposes basic economy restrictions, you may not get any travel credit at all – since basic economy credits are now valid for only six months from date of original ticket purchase (and not for six months from when the credit is issued).
- What’s more, making a same day change to the outbound of a pre-May 28 Wanna Get Away fare reservation even causes you to lose the ability to make a same day change the to the return portion of the ticket (since it becomes a basic economy ticket, and basic economy doesn’t permit same day changes).
This all hits Southwest Rapid Rewards elite A-List members the most. They’ll lose at least one free back on the return portion of their trip if they make a same day change to the outbound.
It’s a complete surprise to see Southwest treating the return half of a roundtrip ticket as having been changed when a change is made to the outbound. While that may be something other airlines have done in the past, it’s not been Southwest’s practice.
And they never announced that they would be changing this practice – so Southwest’s customers are getting caught by surprise when they learn they’ve lost free checked bags, the ability to make a same day change to their tickets and more just for exercising the options available to them on the tickets they bought.
Surely elite members being told that they could still make same day changes to the cheapest tickets, as long as they were purchased prior to May 28, meant that they would be able to make such changes to both halves of their roundtrip!
A-List preferred member for years – their added value got all my flight $ unless they didn’t offer where / when I needed to go. Now they won’t get another dollar from me.
Any “investment “ firm can buy any company for 10% and then proceed to ruin it? I see them crashing the airline and selling off the pieces like the pirate venture capitalists they are.
This version of capitalism is the stupidest version.
Paying more for a Wanna Get Away Plus fare before May 28th is what I did in order to change my return flight (same day). I had to pay for my bag! I was upset! I have a Rapid Rewards CC and I was never informed for this increase. I watched a video last week on what happened to SWA. The equity firm that has majority stake is forcing these changes. This will be in death of SWA.
Never flown anything but NW. Probably won’t any more unless I absolutely have to. You’ve cut your own throats.
When I was in college I took an economics class (many years ago, I don’t know if they still teach this) that taught the concept of caveat emptor, or in the vernacular, let the buyer beware.
It doesn’t seem to be in American DNA, but the issues people are running into here is actually quite predictable. Even my son did not make a change to his reservation for fear of what happened here (basically the airfare dropped bit he didn’t want to modify the reservation since the lost of free bags and other things were more than the airfare drop).
I suspect the majority of people who ran into this problem probably think in terms of how things should (or how they think things should work) rather than how things really work.
Even the people who claim this is an IT problem aren’t thinking in terms of how things really work. Sure, it was possible for them to code the system to accommodate the people who made reservations pre-May 28th, but if you think( about it, what’s the return on investment? They’re trying to get away from the old model. You can’t even argue “goodwill” in this case. Southwest already tossed the goodwill perspective out the window when they switched to this model.
@HS: Well stated. There’s no brand image left worth protecting.
A perfect business school case study on whether it makes sense to destroy a brand and how to do it.
This looks like an opportunity for another airline to adjust their program to match the old SW program. If they can make it work economically, and make some kind of guarantee that they’d stick with it, perhaps they can pick up major market share from SW.
Just flew a few days ago and I had several SW employees apologize to me for SW lying to me without my saying a word. Employees are embarrassed. I use curbside check-in and did a double take when they charged me for it! The guy felt bad and was going to waive it for us. I said I’d go with the program and pay. We always take care of all service people with gratuity and I doubt the curbside charges go to the service people. I agree that someone saw quick profit by squeezing every last penny out of their loyal customers over the next year or two and selling off assets as they destroy yet another airline. SW with TWA, Braniff, the other Braniff, Eastern, Continental, Pan Am…
Common sense. Its says in the rules you can NOT change a ticket after May 28 if you have a WGA ticket, you have to cancel and rebook. You cant make changes to a WGA you booked before May 28 because that fare class no long exist. You booked a r/t WGA and now want to change it. Well the rules state you can’t. You can’t have a r/t that is half Basic fare and half WGA because WGA does not exist anymore. The whole don’t expire means the credit you are hold now will not expire but once you use it to book a flight it activates a expiration rule based on the fare and fare rule you book.