Post all SW questions concerns, etc. here...

[Lvsdisney]

I feel like they were thinking, "What would Herb do?" This is very generous of them!

 

[poohj80]

This is wonderful and hope our current travel funds will reflect these new dates soon! Perhaps they were waiting for this announcement so they wouldn’t need to adjust expiration dates more than once.

 

[rlduvall]

I've been waiting for my TF to get the new June of 2021 extension date for travel in August. Being concerned the price would go up I went ahead and used points, but was monitoring the price hoping to rebook using my TF. Of course, the price has gone up, but I'm not going to worry about it anymore because I will just convert the TF into points. Awesome.

 

[Fangorn]

I do think that a lot of it is that they are just doing the next right thing - both for their customers as well as the company. If, by extending the life span of travel funds, they can get customers to maybe not go for a refund, they retain some cash now, and don't have to provide service for up to 2 years. That's good for them. It's also good in that it makes customers a feeling that they matter and increase the likelihood that we'll return as customers once this all blows over. It's really a very smart, thing to do. Definitely a long term win-win.

Personally, I had an earlyMay flight that I hadn't quite gotten around to canceling. SW had been moving it all over the place for the past 2 weeks and i just wanted to see where it would finally land. Tuesday I got a call from SW letting me know that it had been changed (which I did know) and offered me a full refund if the change didn't work. I called this morning and canceled the flight and took the refund. Had I known this change was coming I probably would've just gone with the TF.

Steve

 

[Fangorn]

... Of course, the price has gone up, but I'm not going to worry about it anymore because I will just convert the TF into points. Awesome.

I like the idea of converting TF to points too. But I'm unclear as to what the exchange rate is going to be. The email says "same rate you would be able to purchase a ticket with points today". But while there are now only 2 flights (down from 12) on the date of the flight I canceled this morning, they each have different prices that are 2000+ points apart. And Both of those cash prices are less than what I paid for the flight in question. It'll be interesting to see how they actually make this happen.

Still, being able to convert to points is Fantasmic!

Steve

 

[ultimatefans]

I love Southwest so much! I'm super excited for the Companion Pass extension. We got it mid-last year for the first time and couldn't use it then but had several trips planned this year. Most will be canceled. So thankful I'll have a chance to use it next year!

 

[focusondisney]

I love Southwest so much! I'm super excited for the Companion Pass extension. We got it mid-last year for the first time and couldn't use it then but had several trips planned this year. Most will be canceled. So thankful I'll have a chance to use it next year!

That’s great! I am also happy to see they are giving 25000 points toward a CP too. I opened a SW credit card in February that had a 75K bonus point offer. So now with this added 25K, I will have a shot at earning the CP to use next year. SW is really stepping up to keep customers happy.

 

[Iowamomof4]

I'm still holding out hope that they'll cancel our flights coming up here in a week and 2 weeks (flight down in one week, flight home in 2). I'd much rather have a full refund, but this further change to the TF option is wonderful!

 

[biochemgirl]

I need help from the experts to understand travel funds. But I fear I screwed it up so badly that I lost the ability to use it at all

I had flights for Thanksgiving 2019 and one leg of the trip dropped in price during October and I was issued $107 each for two of us. I used that travel fund to purchase a one way flight June 30, 2020 to get us home from Disneyland, which left about $6 each unused. But when prices dropped, on this new flight, I chipped away at it each time until I had saved another $52. Due to coronavirus, the final price was only $49. I didn't realized that everytime I saved money, there were creating a NEW travel fund. Fast forward to today and my June trip to Disneyland is cancelled so I cancelled the $49 flight too - creating yet another new travel fund.

But I was hopeful that maybe I'll make it to WDW and tried to use my $107 towards a $119 flight to MCO. The Southwest system now sees me as having that $107 spread out over 5 different funds for each person, for a total of 10 funds!! And the website will only let me use a total of 4 when I try to book our flights. This is leaving 6 funds and the bulk of the money unused.

Help! What do I do? Or did I lose the value of my original $107 travel fund?

 

[zemmer]

We made several changes due to lower fares, and they were all separate travel funds even though they had the same confirmation number. (We had 4 flights that were changed 1-4 times each, so 1 flight confirmation number had 4 separate travel funds.) I spent an hour yesterday booking one way trips with different travel funds, then canceling and using the new travel funds with other small ones until I had 3 travel funds instead of 12. Waiting for November flights now!

@biochemgirl
Quoting myself instead of retyping. You can do this to consolidate travel funds or just convert your funds to points. If I’d known converting funds to points was going to be an option, I probably wouldn’t have spent the time doing this.

 

[biochemgirl]

@biochemgirl
Quoting myself instead of retyping. You can do this to consolidate travel funds or just convert your funds to points. If I’d known converting funds to points was going to be an option, I probably wouldn’t have spent the time doing this.

I'm not sure if I qualify for the recently announced converstion to points because my original travel fund is from Oct 2109. Anyone know how to find out?

 

[zemmer]

I'm not sure if I qualify for the recently announced converstion to points because my original travel fund is from Oct 2109. Anyone know how to find out?

It does get confusing. It sounds like you could use 3 funds to book a new flight, cancel and use those funds to book and cancel until you consolidated down to a couple of travel funds. Those would be eligible since they were new confirmation numbers cancelled during the allowed timeframe. Maybe a call to SWA tomorrow would help clear it up.

 

[Leigh L]

I'm not sure if I qualify for the recently announced converstion to points because my original travel fund is from Oct 2109. Anyone know how to find out?

I just looked up DH's funds expiration date, which I thought was 9/7 but actually 9/20, and from what I read, his won't qualify for this. I sort of have a similar question as you though, because my original plan was to book him an August flight (kids and I are already booked and are leaving a few days earlier than he is able to join us) but thinking if things aren't better and we had to cancel, would we lose the travel funds and the additional $$ for the ticket on 9/20/20? (We are accepting of losing the travel funds because that was a risk when we booked at the price we did, but don't want to add more funds to expire a month later if we had to cancel due to COVID).

 

[teawar]

I need help from the experts to understand travel funds. But I fear I screwed it up so badly that I lost the ability to use it at all

I had flights for Thanksgiving 2019 and one leg of the trip dropped in price during October and I was issued $107 each for two of us. I used that travel fund to purchase a one way flight June 30, 2020 to get us home from Disneyland, which left about $6 each unused. But when prices dropped, on this new flight, I chipped away at it each time until I had saved another $52. Due to coronavirus, the final price was only $49. I didn't realized that everytime I saved money, there were creating a NEW travel fund. Fast forward to today and my June trip to Disneyland is cancelled so I cancelled the $49 flight too - creating yet another new travel fund.

But I was hopeful that maybe I'll make it to WDW and tried to use my $107 towards a $119 flight to MCO. The Southwest system now sees me as having that $107 spread out over 5 different funds for each person, for a total of 10 funds!! And the website will only let me use a total of 4 when I try to book our flights. This is leaving 6 funds and the bulk of the money unused.

Help! What do I do? Or did I lose the value of my original $107 travel fund?

What I’ve done in the past when I’ve had a lot of travel funds (I’m in the boat right now) is book each leg of the trip separately, which would allow me to use, I believe, 3-4 types of payments per leg, so I could in theory use a combination of 6 or 8 travel funds, luv vouchers, swa gift cards, or a credit card. So I would try booking everyone separately, which can be a pain, but it can be cost effective. I believe travel funds can only be used for the person who’s name is attached to it. So you would have to manage different reservation numbers for each person. This can be complicated, but nothing a spreadsheet can’t handle. Good luck on your decision making?

 

[scrappinginontario]

What I’ve done in the past when I’ve had a lot of travel funds (I’m in the boat right now) is book each leg of the trip separately, which would allow me to use, I believe, 3-4 types of payments per leg, so I could in theory use a combination of 6 or 8 travel funds, luv vouchers, swa gift cards, or a credit card. So I would try booking everyone separately, which can be a pain, but it can be cost effective. I believe travel funds can only be used for the person who’s name is attached to it. So you would have to manage different reservation numbers for each person. This can be complicated, but nothing a spreadsheet can’t handle. Good luck on your decision making?

While this works, one thing to keep in mind is that if you choose not to purchase EBCI, there are multiple reservation numbers to check in at the -24 hour mark to secure boarding pass numbers.

Just something else to further complicate things.

 

[nkereina]

I'm not sure if I qualify for the recently announced converstion to points because my original travel fund is from Oct 2109. Anyone know how to find out?

I had travel funds from a flight that was originally booked in June 2019. I used those travel funds towards the cost of my flight that was supposed to be in April 2020, which I canceled. Its my understanding, both from SWA releases as well as two separate conversations with SWA employees, that my travel funds will be eligible for the extension on the expiration date even though they expire June 2020. Its eligible because my travel was supposed to be in April 2020, which is within the eligible timeframe. With the new offerings from SWA, it sounds like I will also be eligible for the point conversion. It sounds like both options apply to the same set of affected people, and you can choose to do one or the other.

Your situation is similar to mine, so I believe you would be eligible for both the points conversation or travel fund extension. We don't know exactly yet how the point conversion will translate, so you could be better off consolidating your travel funds if you find you'd lose some of the value with the points conversion, or the point cost of the flight you want to book is higher. That's something to look into when more information comes out. As PP mentioned, once the expiration extension rolls out, you can also just book "dummy" flights for the purpose of consolidating the travel funds until you whittle it down.

My current concern is exactly when can we expect the expiration date extension or point conversion option to roll out. I'd like to re-book my October flight, but I can't until these options are in place. And every day I check, the October flight prices seem to be increasing. I presume from others re-booking their travel as well.

 

[nkereina]

While this works, one thing to keep in mind is that if you choose not to purchase EBCI, there are multiple reservation numbers to check in at the -24 hour mark to secure boarding pass numbers.

Just something else to further complicate things.

This is a good point to keep in mind. In addition to that, when you have to check in multiple reservation numbers at the 24 hour mark, you'll likely be separated in the boarding position order. And even if you do have EBCI, you have a higher chance of having separated boarding positions than if you were on the same reservation. The party can all board together at the highest boarding position if you need to stay together, but just worth mentioning.

 

[teawar]

This is a good point to keep in mind. In addition to that, when you have to check in multiple reservation numbers at the 24 hour mark, you'll likely be separated in the boarding position order. And even if you do have EBCI, you have a higher chance of having separated boarding positions than if you were on the same reservation. The party can all board together at the highest boarding position if you need to stay together, but just worth mentioning.

I agree with you, that can be a pain at check in time. I normally will have 3 devices open and click away. My husband doesn’t care where he sits, but I always want to be sure my daughter is with one of us. It normally works out, but I understand that it’s more complicated.

 

[loveswdw]

All I can say is W-O-W!!! I don't know how they could be very profitable doing all that for us, but yay!!!!!

Wait until you see how much flights will cost once they start flying again. We are still scheduled for a first part of June trip but I haven't booked airfare. When I looked the other day, RT was almost $450 each. Now of course being SWA, the price will fluctuate but I can bet cheap flights will not be a part of the plan once they're flying again. I guess it depends on how many people they can get to get on a plane when all this is over.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Wait until you see how much flights will cost once they start flying again. We are still scheduled for a first part of June trip but I haven't booked airfare. When I looked the other day, RT was almost $450 each. Now of course being SWA, the price will fluctuate but I can bet cheap flights will not be a part of the plan once they're flying again. I guess it depends on how many people they can get to get on a plane when all this is over.

It's funny how we can all interpret things differently.

Not saying you are wrong, just that I'm looking at it differently. Since I'm not leaving my home right now (and haven't entered a store in almost 5 weeks), I can't imagine getting on an airplane right now so booking air travel isn't on my radar. If others feel similarly, I can see flights being less expensive than normal.

Let's see how things pan out...