Westjet Basic?

[bcwife76]

Has anyone flown Westjet Basic? The flights we're looking at for Orlando for August from Vancouver just dropped $700, but the fare is WJ Basic. As far as I can tell, the difference is we sit at the back of the plane (it allows us to pick our seats back there for free), the tix are non refundable and maybe we pay more for checked luggage? Am I missing anything? Has anyone flown Basic and can tell me if it's been fine?

 

[Donald - my hero]

Has anyone flown Westjet Basic? The flights we're looking at for Orlando for August from Vancouver just dropped $700, but the fare is WJ Basic. As far as I can tell, the difference is we sit at the back of the plane (it allows us to pick our seats back there for free), the tix are non refundable and maybe we pay more for checked luggage? Am I missing anything? Has anyone flown Basic and can tell me if it's been fine?

There's nothing different with the actual flight BUT a ton of other restrictions that you've mentioned and more! You can't change the seats they assign you, even at the 24 hour mark, without paying (and it's a LOT more than the difference in fare BTW) You don't earn any WJ dollars, and if you are a gold or platinum member you can't even pay to upgrade to the premium seats. IMHO it's not worth the savings of (for the flight i chose) only $23.10 pp.

 

[bcwife76]

That's the thing, it says they assign the seats to you but when I did a 'dummy' booking, we were able to pick our seats for free, it was the back of the plane but still. I don't care about the reward points, my concern is the seats (which looks like we can pick). For our flight it's about $300 more to bump up to their next level so I'm still not sure lol

*edit, it's only $202 total to move up to the next level so I think maybe I should just stick with that! lol*

 

[Donald - my hero]

Oh i just had a thought about the picking your seats --- do you have young children? If so you're being put into what we call "the WestJet Nursery"! That's how they get around splitting up families, yes you get "free seat selection" BUT it's only at the very back of the plane and in the case of the basic fare, that's IT .. no changing what you pick.

Like i said though, I'd still feel more comfy bumping up to the next level of fare - our travel agent booked us on the basic without our knowledge and if there had been a travel advisory issued (which there was BTW!) we wouldn't have had the option to change our flights to a different one. Not a problem in August but for us it was a very real issue and once we bought NEW flights it let us change as soon as the advisory dropped!

 

[bcwife76]

Oh i just had a thought about the picking your seats --- do you have young children? If so you're being put into what we call "the WestJet Nursery"! That's how they get around splitting up families, yes you get "free seat selection" BUT it's only at the very back of the plane and in the case of the basic fare, that's IT .. no changing what you pick.

Like i said though, I'd still feel more comfy bumping up to the next level of fare - our travel agent booked us on the basic without our knowledge and if there had been a travel advisory issued (which there was BTW!) we wouldn't have had the option to change our flights to a different one. Not a problem in August but for us it was a very real issue and once we bought NEW flights it let us change as soon as the advisory dropped!

Our kids are 11 (will be 12 at time of travel) and 9 so not young. You make a very good point, I don't want to be with the toddler and babies at the very back of the plane lol So for $202 total roundtrip, I'll bump up to the next level ;-)

 

[starvenger]

My kids are 9 and 12 and I've not been able to select seats on Econo. What time frame did you do your beta test in? Although we prefer the front so I suppose we'd need to prepurchase anyway.

 

[bcwife76]

My kids are 9 and 12 and I've not been able to select seats on Econo. What time frame did you do your beta test in? Although we prefer the front so I suppose we'd need to prepurchase anyway.

I'm looking at Aug 22-29 round trip from Vancouver and it did allow me to choose seats (at the back of the plane) for no extra cost when I make a fake booking a few days ago. But since posting I've decided we should move up a level from Basic as the cost isn't very much more in the end.

 

[xWhereswaldo]

We always travel on basic fare and have never had a problem, you just don't get as much flexibility. Checked baggage is the same $

 

[Mikamarii]

I'll add that the no west jet dollars is just part of your westjet ID. So if you didnt have a westjet MC but a westjet rewards ID you would get nothing for basic. But if you do have a westjet MC you still get the dollars that are posted to your credit card. (I'm pretty sure anyway).

We have flown basic before without issue. We dont care where we sit on the plane and like that we can have our seats selected for free (saves us a few hundred round trip) as we have been split up before. Although that feature is available on econo fares too. I'll add though that you get 1 adult seat free for every two kids I think. So we always have to pay for 1 seat.

The biggest difference seems to be the abiltiy to cancel/change. So of it's only a 25/30$ difference maybe it's not worth it. But if it's a huge price difference then basic may be a good option.

 

[Mikamarii]

My kids are 9 and 12 and I've not been able to select seats on Econo. What time frame did you do your beta test in? Although we prefer the front so I suppose we'd need to prepurchase anyway.

That happened to us when we bought our flights last summer for this past january trip. It wouldn't let me select any seat for any of us. I called westjet to see why and they said because of the kids the seats are free they had to manually do it or something. That was the first trip where the kids seats were free. And we've flown with them every year since they were born!
We were told we could still sit somewhere else on the plane we would just have to pay for it. I didnt ask what the price was.

 

[BLAZEY]

I think you were able to select your seat because you have minor, under age 12 kids in you family reservation. They legally aren't allowed to separate you and can't charge you to sit next to your minor child, so the let you pick from the most undesirable seats, at the back of the plane. If you want to "upgrade" to more flexibility, I don't think they can charge for you to sit with your kid, they don't have to seat ALL 4 together just 2 and 2.

 

[bcwife76]

Thanks everyone. We did end up booking Econo rather than Basic for our Orlando flights this summer. We will also be flying to LA in October so I might end up booking Basic since it will be a much shorter flight, I can survive at the back of the plane for 2 hours ;-0)

 

[youngdeb12]

My biggest concern with booking basic is that if for any reason you have to change or cancel your flight, you get none of your money back. I'm not sure how travel insurance would apply in that situation, but I've heard of so many horror stories about people missing flights/connections and being SOL.