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

[EACarlson]

I've got a layover next week at BWI, what's the best choice for something I can grab for breakfast quickly to eat on the second leg of my trip?

 

[easyas123]

I've got a layover next week at BWI, what's the best choice for something I can grab for breakfast quickly to eat on the second leg of my trip?

We've got all the usual fast food/sandwich type places if you are looking for something to take on your connecting flight. The BWI website has a map or listing of food places depending on terminal, so if you know what gate or terminal you are connecting thru I'd look there to see what available.

 

[DebbieB]

Isn't there an emergency exit in the back of the plane? At least on the types SW flies?

Yes, it’s behind the last row. There’s no extra legroom seats for those doors. They have slides.

 

[EACarlson]

We've got all the usual fast food/sandwich type places if you are looking for something to take on your connecting flight. The BWI website has a map or listing of food places depending on terminal, so if you know what gate or terminal you are connecting thru I'd look there to see what available.

Thank you. Thanks to southwest and ATC I missed my connection so I had plenty of time to check out the terminal. Currently on a three hour delayed flight from BHM to MCO due to a bird strike. Missed my connection so I'm rebooked tomorrow morning.

 

[teawar]

Thank you. Thanks to southwest and ATC I missed my connection so I had plenty of time to check out the terminal. Currently on a three hour delayed flight from BHM to MCO due to a bird strike. Missed my connection so I'm rebooked tomorrow morning.

Oh no! Are you having to stay overnight in BHM or BWI?

 

[EACarlson]

Oh no! Are you having to stay overnight in BHM or BWI?

I ended up staying overnight at MCO. My scheduled flight home was BHM-MCO-MKE. BHM-MCO was delayed three hours so I missed my connection. Had the option of staying Sunday night in BHM, but wouldn't get home until after 5pm Monday. By going to MCO I was able to get on a flight first thing Monday morning and was home at 11am.
In 38 years of flying I'd never missed a connection, missed two this weekend. One was absolutely Southwest's fault and the other was due to a random event. Kind of glad I'm flying American when I go back to FL next week.

 

[disneylover81]

I managed to score a weekend reservation for a AKL Jambo Value Studio from March 14-16. I was excited since it was such a small amount of DVC points....until I went to SWA and the tickets would be $2,400 or 70k SWA points for just DH and me. Now I am bummed. I know it's spring break week, but still that seems outrageous! I am going to keep an eye on it for a price drop, but I am not even sure if that'll happen so I may have to cancel. Our current CP expires in December. I am debating on signing DH up for the SWA visa's to earn CP for 2025-2026. I just have to make sure we can meet the spend on them.

 

[migirl]

I don’t know if this is unique to SW: if I buy two plane tickets I get one price but if I buy four tickets my flight rate increases. I don’t dare make two transactions and save slightly by getting two tickets for less. They’d probably raise the second set of tickets exponentially.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don’t know if this is unique to SW: if I buy two plane tickets I get one price but if I buy four tickets my flight rate increases. I don’t dare make two transactions and save slightly by getting two tickets for less. They’d probably raise the second set of tickets exponentially.

It's related to how many tickets are left available at that price. The number of passengers is irrelevant, sometimes there's 3 left, sometimes 2 sometimes 1 left at that price.

You're actually better off doing multiple transactions as you will get the lower price on the tickets available at that price (assuming no one else has bought them before you). I'll show you some screen shots below for why.

SWA should notate how many tickets left at the price shown.

For example this is just a dummy flight that I did but you can see below this is if I'm searching for 1 passenger and it shows that there is only 1 ticket left at each of those prices.


This is if I'm searching for 2 passengers


Because there is only 1 ticket left at the $199 price (for WGA as an example) I would be better off purchasing that one ticket by itself then going back in and purchasing the second ticket which will be at the $209 price (for WGA). If I choose to purchase both tickets in the same transaction I will be paying $209 for both tickets (if using WGA as an example).

 

[LadybugsMum]

Personally, I would just pay the higher price to have all of us on the same reservation, but I'm a solo parent to elementary aged kids. That way if any changes are made to the flight, I can guarantee that we are all on the same new flight.

 

[EACarlson]

I don’t know if this is unique to SW: if I buy two plane tickets I get one price but if I buy four tickets my flight rate increases. I don’t dare make two transactions and save slightly by getting two tickets for less. They’d probably raise the second set of tickets exponentially.

@Mackenzie Click-Mickelson did a very good job of explaining the fare buckets above. But I'll answer the first part, this is absolutely not unique to SW, what is or was unique to SW was that they told you how many were left in that bucket. Delta also lets you know now how many are left at the current price. UA and AA I'm pretty sure don't, they only show you the price based on how many tickets you selected.
It is an advanced strategy to have separate reservations to save a few bucks. I agree with @LadybugsMum, I'm not doing that to save $10 if I have my kids with me, or even my wife. To me, staying on the same reservation is worth the few extra dollars.
Ticket prices won't go up exponentially when changing fare buckets, well, almost never. Most of the times the price changes from one bucket to the next is fairly small, like posted above. The difference is $10.

 

[Leigh L]

In my experience, there are pros and cons to booking separately to get the cheaper price and there are some good points made in the last few posts.

My family tends to book separately anyway since we are 3 adults with a teen who may not always travel on the same day (e.g. I might travel earlier or stay longer and DH has more time restrictions with work and I can work from anywhere) so we'll book separately to get the lower price but one of us always books with my child/now teen.

This wasn't with SWA, but a few years back American canceled our flight last minute (not weather-related) and they scattered us all over the place on airports (two different DC airports and MCO/Melbourne on the other end) on two different days. We ended up renting a last-minute car and driving. American was difficult to work with getting our refunds, etc.

I suspect SWA would be better customer service, but you might not want to risk something like that happening, especially if it's not a significant amount of money.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Personally, I would just pay the higher price to have all of us on the same reservation, but I'm a solo parent to elementary aged kids. That way if any changes are made to the flight, I can guarantee that we are all on the same new flight.

Yeah there's a wide variety of reasons you may want to be on the same reservation but if someone is looking at just price and wondering why they input 2 and get a certain price but input 4 and get another price there's background mechanics to why. Sometimes the price difference is small sometimes it's quite large (I've seen more than $100 per passenger differences).

Your situation of having minors is a good one (and maybe the PP has them) but for traveling parties that have adults that can often change it.

Prior to them transferring A-list benefits to other passengers on the reservation we have done the purchase 1 in 1 transaction purchase the other in the next when only 1 ticket was left at that lower price. Also if you're purchasing for multiple people. where you want different methods of payment especially important for us who are wanting the points for a CC. We've purchased tickets for our in-laws before (who can do flight purchasing on their own but tend to get overwhelmed) and it's not necessary to be on the same reservation together and no sense in us all paying a higher price.

Also flexibility has come into play. My sister-in-law would not want to purchase tickets with us all being on the same reservation when she's traveling with her boyfriend because he frequently backs out, has family things come up, etc so it doesn't make sense for us all to try and book together in one reservation. Last year when we went to Cancun for our 10th anniversary and the in-laws came 2 weeks before the trip sister-in-law tells us her boyfriend forgot that Ramadan was at the time and he had a work thing pop up so they actually came down 2 days later than the rest of us.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

they scattered us all over the place on airports (two different DC airports and MCO/Melbourne on the other end) on two different days.

That would be terrible. Obviously they are trying to get you to your destination but geez having to do completely different airports from each other is more than an inconvenience in my mind.

 

[Leigh L]

That would be terrible. Obviously they are trying to get you to your destination but geez having to do completely different airports from each other is more than an inconvenience in my mind.

It was crazy! We already had checked in with boarding passes when they canceled. I think had we all been on the same reservation that might not have happened though.

That's the only negative we've ever experienced with booking some of us separately

 

[kristenrice]

Random question for y'all as my pre-trip paranoia is starting to rear its ugly face...

Our return flight in October is a connecting flight and both legs are the last one of the day to their respective destinations. MCO--> MDW departs at 7:50pm and after only a 55min layover, MDW-->GRR departs at 10:30pm. *IF* there is a delay in getting out of MCO, we would have a good chance of missing the connection in MDW, assuming they don't "hold the plane". For funsies, let's assume the worst and say that the delay is due to weather. If we miss the connection, what happens? Are we on our own to book a flight from MDW-->GRR or will SWA make arrangements for us in the morning? I know that we'd likely be on our own for overnight accommodations and meals. We only live 3 hours from MDW so I would consider renting a car and driving home in the morning if we would be on the hook for the cost of a new flight.

 

[piglet1979]

Random question for y'all as my pre-trip paranoia is starting to rear its ugly face...

Our return flight in October is a connecting flight and both legs are the last one of the day to their respective destinations. MCO--> MDW departs at 7:50pm and after only a 55min layover, MDW-->GRR departs at 10:30pm. *IF* there is a delay in getting out of MCO, we would have a good chance of missing the connection in MDW, assuming they don't "hold the plane". For funsies, let's assume the worst and say that the delay is due to weather. If we miss the connection, what happens? Are we on our own to book a flight from MDW-->GRR or will SWA make arrangements for us in the morning? I know that we'd likely be on our own for overnight accommodations and meals. We only live 3 hours from MDW so I would consider renting a car and driving home in the morning if we would be on the hook for the cost of a new flight.

I can't answer your question fully, but when our flight was delayed at MCO (we sat on the tarmac for like an hour or so and only had a 55 minute layover in Baltimore) we were told that they would hold our connecting flight (which they did) because there were like 25 of us on the plan that were on that connecting flight. We did business select and were supposed to be 1 and 2 on the plane. We lost that as they boarded everyone while waiting on our plane. DH and I got the last 2 seats together only because we were off the plane first. We did get vouchers to use on another flight.

 

[EACarlson]

Random question for y'all as my pre-trip paranoia is starting to rear its ugly face...

Our return flight in October is a connecting flight and both legs are the last one of the day to their respective destinations. MCO--> MDW departs at 7:50pm and after only a 55min layover, MDW-->GRR departs at 10:30pm. *IF* there is a delay in getting out of MCO, we would have a good chance of missing the connection in MDW, assuming they don't "hold the plane". For funsies, let's assume the worst and say that the delay is due to weather. If we miss the connection, what happens? Are we on our own to book a flight from MDW-->GRR or will SWA make arrangements for us in the morning? I know that we'd likely be on our own for overnight accommodations and meals. We only live 3 hours from MDW so I would consider renting a car and driving home in the morning if we would be on the hook for the cost of a new flight.

SW will rebook you on the next available flight. However you will probably be on your own for a hotel in Chicago. I would highly doubt that they would pay for a rental car for you to get home either. In both cases where I missed my connection this past weekend, SW had me rebooked before I got off the first plane. On my outbound they had me rebooked as soon as my connection pushed back, and on my return, I was able to get rebooked at the check in desk since it was a three hour delay at my point of origin.

 

[Tiggerish]

Random question for y'all as my pre-trip paranoia is starting to rear its ugly face...

Our return flight in October is a connecting flight and both legs are the last one of the day to their respective destinations. MCO--> MDW departs at 7:50pm and after only a 55min layover, MDW-->GRR departs at 10:30pm. *IF* there is a delay in getting out of MCO, we would have a good chance of missing the connection in MDW, assuming they don't "hold the plane". For funsies, let's assume the worst and say that the delay is due to weather. If we miss the connection, what happens? Are we on our own to book a flight from MDW-->GRR or will SWA make arrangements for us in the morning? I know that we'd likely be on our own for overnight accommodations and meals. We only live 3 hours from MDW so I would consider renting a car and driving home in the morning if we would be on the hook for the cost of a new flight.

I require special assistance because I am a full time power wheelchair user. A couple of years ago, I was on a flight from MCO to GRR (Grand Rapids, MI) which had a plane change at Midway in Chicago. The flight was delayed leaving Orlando and I was going to miss the last connecting flight. They told me to board anyway because that flight was slightly delayed. During the flight there was an announcement that for everyone connecting to GRR, the flight was being held to accommodate them.

When we landed in Chicago, the connecting flight was already boarding. The FA told me a wheelchair and pusher was waiting and my chair would be transferred with the rest of the luggage. When we got to the gate, the wheelchair pusher cut to the front of the line boarding and pushed me to the plane door. They also had blocked off an aisle seat in the 2nd row for me to have. I thought SWA handled it well.

 

[EACarlson]

Follow up to my travel woes last weekend. SW came through with $600 in LUV Vouchers. $300 for the missed connection and reroute on Friday and $300 for the missed connection and forced overnight on Sunday.