Randy Petersen

I just got off the phone with Southwest discussing the following news and the discussion was such that a lot of the credit for the two-year expiring credits came from input in this forum. That is a powerful statement from SWA. Your voice is being heard, congratulations.

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES ANNOUNCES
PROGRAM CHANGES FOR RAPID REWARDS

Southwest Allows Frequent Flyers 24 Months to Earn Awards

DALLAS—Aug. 10, 2005—Southwest Airlines today announced changes to its Rapid Rewards frequent flyer program. Effective today, the carrier will allow Members 24 months (instead of the current 12 months) to earn credits toward free travel. As of Feb. 10, 2006, the carrier will remove systemwide blackout dates and implement seat restrictions for Award travel.

Southwest’s extensive research and Rapid Rewards Member polling revealed that the most desirable changes flyers wanted were more time to earn credits and no systemwide blackout dates for Award travel. For information on the program changes, go to
http://www.southwest.com/jp/rapid_re...c=PR_RR_081005.
Members’ existing credits immediately will be extended for an additional 12 months, giving current Members two years to earn free travel on Southwest. For Awards issued Feb. 10, 2006, or after, seat restrictions will apply. Systemwide blackout dates also will be removed, but certain holiday or peak travel periods will be in high demand and may be difficult times to redeem Award travel. Unexpired Awards issued before Feb. 10, 2006, are unrestricted, even if redeemed after that date. Awards will continue to be valid for travel 12 months from the date of issue.

In the Company’s ongoing effort to keep the program simple and easy to use, Southwest is exploring ways to provide an Award “seat finder” on its web site to help Members more conveniently locate dates and flights when Award seats will be available.

curbcrusher

Err. not such awesome news. 2 year expiration is good, but the seat limitations are not. The complexification of WN continues...

gmax58

I've got to agree with curbcrusher on this one; I've always liked being able to schedule the trips at an hour's notice (Edit 2 - below). It's also going to mean we'll have to be a bit more savvy when it comes to getting on some of the high demand award routes.

I also don't think the elimination of blackout dates will do much - somehow, I don't see WN offering any seats on Wednesday and Sunday of Thanksgiving week...

I do like the fact, though, that we can still accrue unrestricted awards for 6 more months without seat restrictions, because I have 3.5 awards available and two more by the end of the year.

Side note: I'm curious how this will effect the EBay practices...Edit

Edit - because of the seat restrictions; RR awards are quite valuable because they're unrestricted.

Edit 2 - based on what I read about the new rules with last minute award travel, it's going to depend on how much demand there is for award seats (as well as load factors on the route).

swinghi

I honestly don't think it will affect eBay. It is not like the tickets you are awarded expire in 2 years, just that you can take longer in earning them. I see no change.

Strephon

the info at Southwest.com has the statement "Last-minute Award usage will still be allowed based on seat availability." Not sure what this actually means, i.e., at what point before flight date/time availability opens up.

rc408

Me reading this artice:

The additional 12 months and no black out dates is minor compared to adding seat limitations. The fact that I could book any non-sold out flight any time was a great reward. Now I have to verify there are reward seats available and book far in advance to make sure I get to use my RR?

A question: If WN has been in the black for so long because of their business model and many other airlines are going bakrupt, why is WN trying to be more and more like the other airlines? Makes no sense to me, but what do I know, I'm not in upper management.

DotnetWFU

Yeah I am with curbcrusher - seat limitations are a no go, ghost rider.

If there is a seat on a plane, it should be available to award flyers.

freeflyin

Adding seat limitations means Southwest is no better than the legacy carriers as far as award travel goes.They have now lost any advantage they had over the competition in redeeming award travel.

I find myself using Southwest at least 75% less than in previous years-fares are up and bonuses are down-now this change-I can no longer see why anyone would want to fly Southwest with it's "cattle call seating",unless schedules are a factor.

Perhaps this will improve the bottom line at Southwest,but from a personal standpoint,this is no improvement.

pitflyer

Terrible change. I think I speak for most of the frequent fliers who would give up the two year earning period for no seat restrictions any day of the week. That said, I think we all knew this was coming down the pike, anyway, so at least something to help the choking down of the 'limited seats' pill.

The no blackout date seems to me to be a marketing ploy. I'm sure that seats will be severly (if any) limited on the new non-blackout dates, effectively making it the same as before -- you can't get an award ticket on those dates.

nd_eric_77

Wow, what a sneaky way to spring "seat limitations" on us... Now we will have entire weeks of "limited seats" (read: effective blackouts) around holidays rather than a couple days of true blackout per holiday. The way this announcement reads is like a company making a big deal of announcing dental benefits... and in the same announcement announcing an across-the-board salary cut. Gee, thanks.

PT737SWA

Maybe if you keep moaning you'll get your way again since they seem to be listening to you.

gmax58

My big question to the Employees who visit the forum:

Does anyone know of the details of the study? (How many RR members did they ask? How long was this process? What questions were asked?)

I probably lie in the top 2-3% of WN fliers this year (something like 30 segments and 72 flight credits in the past 6 months), but I don't remember being asked for feedback.

Unlike some of people, I'm not going to go yelling and screaming and saying "I'm not flying WN ever again!" (For one thing, it's WN or an RJ for me, and in the 6 years I've flown WN, most of the good things - a smarter boarding process, online checkin, decent legroom - have outweighed the bad - increase in fares [frequent flights to BWI and PHL], the loss of double credit, and the new restricted awards.)

gregorygrady

So SWA gets input from this Forum? How about this input.......

Here's some more input: SWA RR is turning into an absolute joke!! What a complete crock that they listen to this forum. Maybe one of those idiots that runs RR could have come on here and asked us whether we would rather have the program remain the way it was (no blackouts, no capacity controls) or have the RR program devalued but in the process allow us 24 months to accumulate RR credits. I can virtually guarantee you that an informal poll here on FT would have resulted in ~95% or more of FTers voting to keep the program as it was.

1/1/04 -----> Loss of Double Credit
4/1/05 -----> Loss of 50% bonus credit
8/10/05 ---> THIS FURTHER JOKE OF A DEVALUATION!!!!

WONDERFUL!!! GREAT JOB SWA!!!!!!!

PT737SWA

How soon you forget the double credit promotion was originally intended to be 6 MONTHS and they carried it on for how long?!

gregorygrady

Their extensive research and polling probably involved looking through their database to see who had between 9 and 14 credits accumulated in the past 12 months of which several of those credits were going to expire in the next month. SWA probably called them and asked them if they would rather have:

1) A two-year period to accumulate 16 credits in order to even have the chance to get a RR award, or
2) More restrictions on the award that they weren't going to get anyway because their credits were going to expire.

There is no way they asked any true frequent fliers this "research" question because if a flyer doesn't have a problem accumulating 16 credits in 1 year, they surely wouldn't vote to add capacity controls. What a complete bunch of B.S.