Southwest has been hit by massive cancellations during the busy travel period, they have already announced fee free changes and the fact that they will reimburse reasonable expenses. VFTW is now reporting that Southwest will also do the following:
- Companion passes will be extended until January 2023 (for those that were due to expire December 2022)
- Extra month to qualify for elite status. Flights taken in January will count towards the 2022 and 2023 elite qualifying years.
SW canceled my family’s flight to Puerto Rico on Dec 26th. They extended my companion pass to 1/31. They also gave all four of us 25K points for our pain and suffering (my words, not theirs). I put them in my account so these points take me up over the 135k. Anyone know if this will work to get another companion pass?
I had CP and A-list that expired 12/31/22.
They were not extended a month and are gone from my account this morning. Maybe it was only for customers that had a flight canceled.
same here
Just checked again, and, nothing reinstated
I wonder if they will extend drink coupons which expired in 2022, LOL.
I had planned to use my expiring drink tickets on a late December flight that was canceled, I will try to use them next year.
Is it still possible to earn companion pass in Jan 2023? I earned 75k around Jul and was planning to apply the biz version for additional 60k. But for some reason I forgot to do that.
Can their IT systems handle this lol
I just tried adding a companion for a January flight (my companion pass expires today 12/31/22) and there was no option to do so.
Love how the pundits are like this is a low cost carrier. Its not. More often than not, its the most expensive when compared.
The way the airline industry defines it, “low cost carrier” does NOT mean that the FARES are low, it means that the carrier has lower cost OPERATIONS. And that’s based on the operational business structure, not on short-term expenses (like from this meltdown).
Of course, it MAY raise their operating costs long-term depending on what steps they have to take to prevent this from happening in the future. It’s caused in part because Southwest routes most planes point-to-point-to-point all around the country for maximum efficiency (in normal weather), but because of that, very bad weather in just one part of the country can affect their schedule all over the country. And it’s also because they’re using a decades-only technology which can’t adapt to these kind of situations to re-route their planes and to re-position their staff.
With the other airlines operating hub-and-spoke flights (where planes fly either hub-to-hub back and forth or hub-to-spokes back and forth), bad weather in one part of the country is not very likely to affect their schedule in other parts of the country very much.
This kind of mass cancellation all over the country with Southwest has happened in the past, but it usually didn’t last this long because the bad weather in one of the part of the country didn’t last that long, and it usually didn’t happen when so many people were already filling the planes to capacity.
You forgot to mention the massive employee call-outs due to sickness as a reason for the cancellations. SW has NEVER had this degree of cancellations.
Maybe the 300% increase in disability claims the insurance industry is tracking, right after the vax mandates from SW, has something to do with the employee sickness?
When will the a young pilot with “sudden, unexpected” cardiac arrest causing sudden death take down a plane?
No he didn’t forget to mention your made up lies.
Probably never, considering they fly with more than one pilot. What a wild paragraph you typed up though.
But bags fly free lol
just not free speech, per the recent judge’s ruling LOL
Except when they sit around, stranded far away from their owners, at various airports, for free. That problem lasted even longer than the flight cancellations!
I flew on them recently from FLL to New Orleans for less than $100 round trip. That’s low cost.
Do you think I should hold off on meeting my credit card min spend until February to make sure I earn comp pass for 2023/24? I’ve got the leeway to hold off, but would rather knock it out quickly.
Why would you wait until Feb? It’s more ideal to get it as early in the new year as possible.
I read it as points earned in Jan will count for both 2022 and 2023 qualification. I just finished up my spending today (statement closes 1/4) so I hope I’m right…
My pass seems to be extended through February. I drove for Christmas – so I’ll take it.
Is there an extra month to qualify for companion pass too? I’m 4k points way from companion pass and have a few trips in January already.