Southwest Rapid Rewards - WN 18 30Dec08 - what happened?

Hi there,

I've been saving this question for SWABrian's return (& giving him a chance to get caught up with more important things after his vacation!):

I had been scheduled on flight 18 HRL-HOU 30 December. When I got to the airport, I found out that it was canceled (as was the inbound HOU-HRL which would have supplied the aircraft for WN18 - I forgot to write down that flight #). Can SWABrian (or any of the WN employees here) find out the story on these flights?

Fortunately for me, 1) there was room on the next flight 2) which got in ~10 minutes early, 3) allowing me to run "OJ Hertz commercial"-style through HOU to join the boarding line of my connecting AirTran flight. [Yes, I know I booked flights too close together - but I expected any problems to be at the AirTran end!]

Hi there,

I've been saving this question for SWABrian's return (& giving him a chance to get caught up with more important things after his vacation!):

I had been scheduled on flight 18 HRL-HOU 30 December. When I got to the airport, I found out that it was canceled (as was the inbound HOU-HRL which would have supplied the aircraft for WN18 - I forgot to write down that flight #). Can SWABrian (or any of the WN employees here) find out the story on these flights?

Fortunately for me, 1) there was room on the next flight 2) which got in ~10 minutes early, 3) allowing me to run "OJ Hertz commercial"-style through HOU to join the boarding line of my connecting AirTran flight. [Yes, I know I booked flights too close together - but I expected any problems to be at the AirTran end!]

Well, I don't have the complete answer. The inbound aircraft, Flight 1628, aircraft N698SW, was to have originated in DAL. That is where the cancellation occured. That aircraft flew out of DAL about 90 minutes later. It could be that it was going to be late coming from the hangar, and rather than get a line of flight all out of whack right off the bat with a lengthy delay, and the possibility of bad weather in some parts of the country, they decided to cancel the DAL/HOU/HRL/HOU legs, since those folks could be accommodated on later flights. At this point, that's my best guess.

Thanks for the answer! In reality, this was a non-event, since everything was calm, and the plane was only about 2/3 full.

Thanks SWABrian - It looks like the delay occured early enough that I might have been able to fly standby on the prior flight (if I had been up that early!).