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

and if that's a "wink-wink" secret, its the worst kept ever.
Yup! We've been discussing it here for months!!

I know! Like I said I didn't read the over the past few months and fully admitted it could have been discussed/mentioned. BUT I'm trying to maintain honesty and integrity with the customer service rep who advised he was not authorized to mention this to everyone and it was NOT a published thing from SWA. Y'all are free to continue to discuss it though :) I just didn't want to go blabbing about it. I'm usually more of a "go by what's written" kinda gal with respects to published guidelines and have consistently been like that with respects to discussing SWA on the Boards.
 
I was supposed to fly home from MCO on 9/7/2020 and now need to cancel due to COVID-19 exposure. Do You think I make the March 1- Sept 7, 2020 cut off to get the extension to Sept 7, 2022? Or should I move my “flight“ to the 5th or 6th?? I didn’t Want to pull the trigger and mess up by one day!
 
I was supposed to fly home from MCO on 9/7/2020 and now need to cancel due to COVID-19 exposure. Do You think I make the March 1- Sept 7, 2020 cut off to get the extension to Sept 7, 2022? Or should I move my “flight“ to the 5th or 6th?? I didn’t Want to pull the trigger and mess up by one day!

It's not the date of the flight that matters. It's the date the travel funds are created - by either cancellation or change - that matters. If you know you're going to cancel, just do it before Sunday, and you'll be good.

The travel funds will initially show an expiration date a year from the date the ticket was initial purchased. But the travel funds should show a 9/7/22 expiration date the next day. The process SW uses to change the dates is a separate computer run that happens overnight.

Steve
 
Cross-posting this from the I Love Credit Cards thread...

Southwest Travel Fund Extension Deadline (possibly?) approaching soon:
Per the Southwest COVID response webpage we are quickly approaching an important date that I've yet to see extended. That webpage says:
  • If you decide not to travel, as long as you cancel your flight at least 10 minutes before its scheduled departure, the funds used to pay for a nonrefundable ticket (Wanna Get Away® fares) are normally valid for one year from the date of purchase.
  • However, in recognition of the current travel environment, we are extending the expiration date of some travel funds:
    • Customers’ funds that have expired or will expire between March 1, 2020 and September 7, 2020, will now expire September 7, 2022.
    • Any travel funds created because you cancel a flight between March 1 – September 7, 2020, will expire September 7, 2022.
  • For recently cancelled tickets and newly created travel funds, it may take up to five business days for the expiration date to change to September 7, 2022. Typically, the expiration date is updated at midnight after the fund creation.
My Thoughts:
I feel like some sort of update/extension has to come out on this... but if no action is taken, as currently worded, these extensions will not apply to credits created after Monday. And this matters even more BECAUSE...
  • Through December 15, 2020, qualified travel funds that are set to expire September 7, 2022 can be converted into Rapid Rewards points.
  • BUT to qualify, your travel fund must expire September 7, 2022,
  • You have until December 15, 2020 to complete the conversion (which I will add is non-reversible).
So if Sept 7, 2020 is the last date to take advantage of the travel fund extension...it's also potentially the last day to create a fund that can then be converted into points despite the fact that you have until Dec 15th to actually complete the conversion. Lots to ponder here...and hopefully there's some sort of extension that renders this all void, but keep it in mind for now!
 


The offer by Southwest to extend the travel funds from canceled flights worked well for me. Last night I canceled the flights I had booked on June 29th for travel in late November. When I booked I used some travel funds that would have expired in October of this year plus cash. Today my account shows that I received travel funds that expire on 9/7/22 for the cash I spent plus an additional set of travel funds equal to the expiring travel funds I had used and those also were extended until 9/7/22. That took some of the sting out of having to cancel my Thanksgiving trip to Disneyland.

A big thanks to all the people on this thread that alerted me to the offer and walked me through how it worked.
 


Has anyone flown on SW lately and if so what has been your experience with them keeping/changing flight times? We are looking to go to WDW in October but have flexible dates - I actually booked a flight (with points) for the week I'm thinking we'll go but now 2 other weeks are in play and those are earlier in the month and the flights times have become sketchy and most flights during the day are now "unavailable"!

Have we found that they'll cancelling most flights and I should really just bank on not getting my direct flight home and that it will actually be 4 or 5 hours instead??

Thanks!
 
Has anyone flown on SW lately and if so what has been your experience with them keeping/changing flight times? We are looking to go to WDW in October but have flexible dates - I actually booked a flight (with points) for the week I'm thinking we'll go but now 2 other weeks are in play and those are earlier in the month and the flights times have become sketchy and most flights during the day are now "unavailable"!

Have we found that they'll cancelling most flights and I should really just bank on not getting my direct flight home and that it will actually be 4 or 5 hours instead??

Thanks!
I think you’ll find right now that Southwest (and many airlines) are changing their flights frequently due to the times we’re living in. I’ve flown SW almost exclusively for 10+ years and rarely had my flights changed (normally booked opening day) by more than an hour either way. This trip my flights that were booked opening day (Mar 12) changed so many times that I lost count. They were also changed from direct flights both ways to ones with stopovers as all direct flights were removed from the schedules on my dates and around them.

Given the unprecedented times we are living in I wouldn’t count on any flights staying as you book them for the foreseeable future.
 
Agree, flight times change seemingly on an hourly basis. My DD’s flights in October got so screwed up, I cancelled them & booked JB instead. Those flights have changed too but at least remain nonstop. Everything on SWA included a layover.
 
Yes our flights for this weekend were changed significantly - actually not really the flight going down - still nonstop and only an hour later than originally. Our flight home was basically annihilated. We would have lost an entire park day so I booked a very late morning nonstop flight the next day and added a night to Pop. I have anxiously checked my flights multiple times a day since. I believe it has been a month or so since they made that last change. Every time a red banner popped up I would get anxious so that was most of the time lol. Still don’t trust that our return flight won’t be changed since they appeared to still have a lot of availability. It is unfortunately a consequence of the pandemic. I don’t think any airline has been any different and most are probably worse.
 
My flight for next Sat and the following Sunday have also not changed in about a month - prior to that there had been several changes. Hopefully they are done making changes by now. I think a lot of the more recent Oct changes relate to the extension of empty middle seats. Speaking of empty middle seats, will they make my party of 3 sit all in one row or will we also be allowed to take advantage of the empty middle seat policy, with 2 in one row and the other across the aisle or in the row in front/behind?
 
... Speaking of empty middle seats, will they make my party of 3 sit all in one row or will we also be allowed to take advantage of the empty middle seat policy, with 2 in one row and the other across the aisle or in the row in front/behind?

It's SW. You can sit in any available seat you like. They will not make you all sit in the same row. If you want to sit together in the same row, you can.

Steve
 
Has anyone flown on SW lately and if so what has been your experience with them keeping/changing flight times? We are looking to go to WDW in October but have flexible dates - I actually booked a flight (with points) for the week I'm thinking we'll go but now 2 other weeks are in play and those are earlier in the month and the flights times have become sketchy and most flights during the day are now "unavailable"!

Have we found that they'll cancelling most flights and I should really just bank on not getting my direct flight home and that it will actually be 4 or 5 hours instead??

Thanks!

DH & I are headed to Vegas next week (flights were bought about a month ago) and have not experienced any flight changes. My DS and his girlfriend, on the other hand, are flying to Ft Myers in Oct and have had both departure and return flights changed. Right now the flights are still non-stop as only the times have changed (put on a 9:30am departure from 11:20am; 12:10pm return from 2:25pm), but all non-stop departures are currently showing as "unavailable". I'm hoping there are no more changes, but I'm constantly checking.
 
Now that we are after the 9/7 travel fund date, has there been anything additional as far as that being extended? We're booked to fly to Orlando in October, but are coming from NY which has a mandate in place requiring us to quarantine for 14 days upon returning home from Florida (among other states). If this is still in place when we are due to fly, we will be forced to cancel as we would not be able to comply with the mandate upon returning home. SWA's web site even gives us a notice/warning about this when I'm logged in on their web site. Just curious how this will be handled, or if we'd be subject to the standard one year expiration date in this case.
 
DH & I are headed to Vegas next week (flights were bought about a month ago) and have not experienced any flight changes. My DS and his girlfriend, on the other hand, are flying to Ft Myers in Oct and have had both departure and return flights changed. Right now the flights are still non-stop as only the times have changed (put on a 9:30am departure from 11:20am; 12:10pm return from 2:25pm), but all non-stop departures are currently showing as "unavailable". I'm hoping there are no more changes, but I'm constantly checking.

THANKS!!

and do we know if flights that were showing as available but are now greyed out with lines through them (in all 3 ticket categories) and now say "unavailable" are full flights or have those particular flights just been cancelled?
 
Does anyone recall when SW extended the open middle seat through 10/31? We are flying thanksgiving week and am hoping it gets extended into November.
 
THANKS!!

and do we know if flights that were showing as available but are now greyed out with lines through them (in all 3 ticket categories) and now say "unavailable" are full flights or have those particular flights just been cancelled?

My experience has been that if a flight category is sold out, it will say "Sold Out". It's pretty rare for all categories to sold out for a flight, although it does happen.

What I've seen with "Unavailable" across the board, is that the flight has been tagged as having possible (emphasis on "possible") changes and they are not selling anymore seats on the flight until they figure out exactly what they're going to do. Of the 6 or 7 flights I've had where this has happened, only one actually ended up having a change. All the others returned to normal status within a couple of days.

Steve
 
My experience has been that if a flight category is sold out, it will say "Sold Out". It's pretty rare for all categories to sold out for a flight, although it does happen.

What I've seen with "Unavailable" across the board, is that the flight has been tagged as having possible (emphasis on "possible") changes and they are not selling anymore seats on the flight until they figure out exactly what they're going to do. Of the 6 or 7 flights I've had where this has happened, only one actually ended up having a change. All the others returned to normal status within a couple of days.

Steve
GREAT! THANK YOU!
 

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