Tag Archives for southwest airlines.
A former Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 is being offered for sale on Facebook.
The plane was delivered to Southwest in October 1995 and named for the airline’s first Vice President of Maintenance Jack Vidal. It was parked in September 2017. It is currently stored in Victorville, California and it can be yours for an asking price of $550,000.
A customer paid for ‘Early Bird Check-in’ in order to board earlier – their flight was cancelled and they were rebooked on another flight, they didn’t receive the earlier boarding they paid for (they had to buy it again!) or a refund of their early check-in fee.
Naturally Southwest Airlines argues the case can’t be pursued because it’s pre-empted by the Airline Deregulation Act. They lost.
Southwest Airlines filed it annual SEC 10-K and it contains some interesting information about the Rapid Rewards program.
They continue carrying a higher percentage of award passengers than anyone else – by a lot, and even more so during the pandemic – and leveraged the Rapid Rewards program for a $600 million cash advance from Chase.
The card that comes with a companion pass is a great deal – but – consider the current 80,000 point offer that ends February 8.
Meet the spending requirement and you’ll have a minimum of 90,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points. These count towards companion pass. As long as your Southwest Rapid Rewards account was open in 2020 you’ll only need 10,000 more qualifying points for a companion pass that’s valid longer – through 12/31/22 – and you have a lot more points.
It’s common for a Southwest flight to end and some passengers to stay on the plane. That’s because on ‘through flights’ passengers connecting on the plane’s next segment stay on board while everyone else gets off. Then a flight attendant counts the through passengers on the plane. They can get off to stretch their legs and reboard (with the same boarding pass as their first flight!) or stay where they’re at.
But it’s very unusual to see everyone getting off the plane, and a passenger just decide to stay. They even melt down in a scream when a flight attendant pressures them to leave.
A couple just got married who met inflight on Southwest Airlines in November 2018. On a 5 a.m. flight from New York to Dallas, he sat in the window seat and spying an open exit row aisle she sat down beside him. She assumed they’d have an empty middle, perfect for the 1381 mile journey.
However Bonny Andrews, a pastor from India visiting to start a new ministry, sat between them in the middle seat – and struck up a conversation. At 5. A. M.
Southwest Airlines hadn’t yet shared reduced requirements for elite status and companion pass in 2021. That’s changed. And like Marriott they’re giving members credit towards status rather than lowering requirements. They’re also extending Companion Passes that were earned in 2019 for 2020.
Howard Altman, the Managing Editor for Military Times, documented his Southwest Airlines flight to DC on Tuesday filled with “Fight For Trump” cheers.
Southwest Airlines for its part takes to twitter to note they have mask policies. Here, on this flight, those weren’t enforced. But Southwest found itself in a difficult position.
Southwest really is going to spend some of the bailout money on employees (perhaps 50%) which is how the government aid was sold – unlike United Airlines which is likely to receive about $3 billion and plans to only pay its 16,000 furloughed workers through March as-required keeping the rest of the taxpayer money for themselves and their shareholders.
Southwest has aggressively added destinations during the pandemic. Some, like Chicago O’Hare, because of a unique opportunity to gain access to an airport that was full prior to 2020. Others are leisure destinations where they’re seeking new revenue opportunities for planes that have nowhere to go.
Over the past couple of years Southwest growth has been constrained with the grounding of the MAX. They haven’t had the planes to add new destinations. Now they have a surplus of planes because they haven’t needed the frequencies they used to offer, especially on business routes between major cities. And with the end of ‘middle seat blocking’ on Southwest they have even less need to add incremental flights in those markets.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
