I also had an experience with a delayed bag once, which took about an hour to come out on the carousel. It was long enough that I went to the help desk to get help and potentially report the bag as lost. I got a 300 dollar travel credit, and my bag turned up shortly after.
https://support.southwest.com/helpcenter/s/article/boarding-...
Lack of premium class seating is real, Southwest is not the airline for you if you require >17 inch seat width or >31 inch legroom.
I never flew SW, can you or someone explain what the problem is with unassigned seats (what makes it a zoo)? I've used long distance trains and buses and it has been fine.
It really bothers me how other airlines treat seating as a way to further bleed customers of money and create tiers.
Are the rewards that much better than others?
I look at Southwest as an outlier, I don't mind them, but I don't really look for them, they used to fly to inconvinent airports.
I had a trip to Austin where i was mid-flight when they cancelled all flights there a year or so ago. I was headed to Sacramento as a connection from PDX and when I landed I went to gate agent to let them know and they were already befuddled by other customers as everything east of colorado at that point was a mess, somehow though they found flights that would get me to Austin later that day that had not been cancelled as the forecast was to thaw, and all seemed good. Luckily i had only a carry on so no baggage worries. I just had to get to SNA then off to Austin. So i took the flight, with free drinks and internet now, to SNA and I land and cancelled again in mid air. So I'm thinking what the heck now. I get with the agent who was very understanding and we found a path to go see my parents instead in AZ (i figured since i was this far and hadn't seen them in a few years at their city might as well). They let me divert my destination for no charge, I did have to fly back up to San Jose and then from there to PHX. It was my longest domestic travel experience ever (5am-4pm) but every step the flight attendants, the pilots, the gate agents, everyone was awesome. After SNA I got free drinks, internet, and in the first boarding group from there. I somehow made it to PHX before 4pm. I was blown away at the compassion shown and the respect given even after some passengers blew up at some of these folks. They reset with me and I showed them a modicum of respect and they helped me out immensely. Thier people at every stop seemed to really enjoy their job when dealing with decent passengers and even the not so decent ones they owuld put up with and move along with a smile.
They have consistently been by far the worse value from either of the airports in my area even after paying additional fees on other airlines such as checked baggage fees.
That in itself is why I prefer it.
Tentative plans? Don't worry, book anyway. Plans change? Don't worry, just rebook. Life is good here.
(Unless I am flying with my family. Then I have to fight for seats during an already stressful time.)
Peak travel time, they do shit the bed because of the same software that makes them so good.
Also, they have one of the lowest rates of baggage lost, despite having free baggage lol.
Southwest treats all its customers the way the big three treat their most frequent fliers. I am loyal to Delta and also never pay baggage fees or change fees or have miles expire. The lounges are free, which means free food and drink from one airport to the other. I can get a human on the phone within 60s, have had a car help with gate-to-gate transfers when a delay (not my fault) caused a close call while I was flying with a pet and had them help when I needed to fly back from Mexico without my (stolen) passport. For those privileges, I spend five figures with them a year and quite a bit more on their branded credit card.
My mom flew Delta recently. Despite me booking her into a quite-nice set (albeit not front-cabin, my bad), she had an atrocious--almost condescending--experience all the way through. Surprise fees on check-in. No help at the gate. Expensive restaurants or fast food in the terminals, nothing in between. (Granted, the advantages of Delta having never lost one of my bags nor cancelled a flight for bewildering reasons extended to her.)
Going forward, if I weren't buying a front-cabin ticket for her, I'd try to have her fly Southwest.
Maybe other companies shouldn't completely optimize away the humanity in their services. Maybe have some core values beyond "make number go up."
That means the airline could have taken your money, spent it, and the bankruptcy court can say that they don't actually have to honor your ticket because it falls below the line of the things the airline has money to actually pay people back for. And then you have to go buy another ticket on another airline.
Beyond that, Southwest is known for loading and unloading their planes efficiently: https://www.npr.org/2015/06/28/418147961/the-man-who-saved-s...
I’ll gladly take Delta over SW or Spirit but I’m at a huge hub. Delta is about as cheap as SW if I account for my Amex discounts.
When I travelled a lot, I would fly Southwest the first part of the year to earn the companion pass. Once earned I would fly Delta or United, who ever was cheaper.
As a consumer it is nice to have a choice and competition. Seems like the other large carriers raise fees and degrade the travel experience in tandem.
Seems to me that Southwest are learning the hard way that not being competitive and transparent with consumers about their pricing is bad for business.
Basically, they took a principled stand to not show their prices in place where it would LOOK worse (without being worse) and they have stuck to it. The world changed to be more in alignment with their price honesty; they didn't cave to showing their prices unfairly in an effort to be more "competitive" or "transparent".
I bet they weren't too unhappy about not paying an agent/referral fee to these "price comparison sites" (that are really often travel agents themselves, or are at least getting a commission from those or the airline directly).
For related reasons, Easyjet or Ryanair (I forgot which one) was not available for booking through the regular GDSes for the longest time, which made them unavailable for booking through traditional travel agents not directly integrating with their proprietary inventory system. I bet that was as much about not wanting to pay the incumbents' fees as much as it was about being "modern API forward".
So not too sure what's changed.
They didn't want to be easily compared back then on a level playing field. So it's a bit surprising that they want to be easily compared now, but the industry is also different.
Most likely if there was a principle, it was that they didn't want to pay Sabre to be in it, especially since Sabre was part of American Airlines until 2000.
I would bet it was just a negotiation of travel agent commission paid to Google.
I don't trust the price I'm quoted until I get to checkout, but if I don't even SEE them in my list of flights to compare, they're not likely to be a consideration.
A lot of flight aggregators also support filtering in/out airlines and I often do this with those who are sneaky about their fees.
As the other comments said, that's highly doubtful. Also, you have to balance that against the fact that for many people (myself included) Southwest was always the first site I checked, specifically because they "trained" me to know I always had to go to their site, and that for many destinations they were by far the best option for me due to price and flight times, even given their "cattle call" seating.
As far as Southwest being listed on OTAs is concerned: I'm pretty sure they always have been, or I wouldn't have bought a ticket with them a while ago. They're just apparently not on all of them.
I also used to think Google flight search would show the lowest prices, but I recently saved a few hundred dollars by buying on Expedia. Same everything, just cheaper than even the airline’s website.
Also, yeah all companies lobby against competition.
Everyone has their own preferences, but I wonder is there a tangible advantage to flying Southwest to those that prefer it?
I tend to just relax during both boarding/de-boarding since it's only a few minutes difference anyway and the effort/stress of trying to move quickly outweighs the few minutes savings. If the seat is pre-selected, I can simply wait for the line to go away and board last without standing for 10m. It seems to me that most people rush to board first even with pre-selected seating (perhaps optimizing for space in the overhead bins)
If you have a connecting flight with a short layover, is the exception where I want to be right near the exit. So I guess it's more of a preference thing
for those in Dallas, the trip to Lovefield instead of DFW is super convenient. playing "hunger games" as you put it to find a seat vs traveling to the larger airport can be worth it especially if traveling alone.
there's also free checked bags compared to the other lower price carriers.
the biggest negative is you might be flying on a MAX
One neat trick: you can rebook your exact same itinerary if you see it cheaper and get the difference as a credit (for the Wanna Get Away class fares; if you booked with the pricier ones, you'll get it back as a refund to your credit card).
Now that Spirit dropped them, I wouldn’t be surprised if change fees get scrapped across the board soon given the upcoming requirement to advertise them upfront.
Why does Southwest even have any jurisdiction here? It seems like they won a preliminary case, but don't we have established president that scraping websites is legal, thanks to hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn?
Really thinking of doing a startup in scraping websites and turning it into filterable/sortable tables that can be queried via sql.
Not SW-specific, but air travel generally:
- Climate change: carbon footprint nearly 44% greater than a single occupancy vehicle but multiplied over thousands of miles
- Monetized misery with short seat pitches, junk fees, and preferential treatment with $$$
- Inconsistent, sometimes terrible customer service (About 10 years ago, I was stuck at Heathrow but Virgin Atlantic once showed me how to and let me use their booking terminal directly to find a flight on any carrier. They definitely had customer service.)
- Regular inconveniences like endless gate changes (AA pulled this 11x in 6 hours to me at DFW)
- Sketchy maintenance practices like offshoring MRO
- Close calls and ATC shortage
