I read about Freebird a while back, but finally tried it out a couple ofv days ago.
First of all, who if anyone, is a competitor to Freebird? I did look at berkshire Hathaway but I thought it was way too complicated even to get a quote especially relative to the ease of Freebird! I suppose premium credit card insurance might be a competitor but:
1. They absolutely will not pay for new flights with trip delay insurance, only hotel, meals, ground transportation, and incidental purchases like clothing medicine or a phone charger; and
2. Most importantly, it is a nightmare to file a claim. A massive amount of paperwork, getting documentation from the airline, etc. etc. and then even if you file it all correctly it may take weeks to get the reimbursement and likely follow up calls and emails.
So unless you tell me otherwise, Freebird has no competition!
So last week I protected my itinerary for two people
Fri Apr 19 on WN
ICT-STL
STL-BOS
and a return on Sun Apr 21 with the itinerary in reverse. It cost $68 for roundtrip protection for two people. A oneway trip per person is $19 and roundtrip is $34 slight savings per person.
I filled out my flight information on
http://getfreebird.com
although the faster and easier way to do it as I found out was to forward your confirmation email to:
[email protected]
(this is very similar to how you would forward an itinerary to TripIt.)
I have had cancellations on Southwest every week for the past 3 weeks so I thought my odds were good to be able to really use Freebird.
All looked on time, and we boarded in ICT and took off to STL. Just as the plane was descending in to STL, at the same minute, I got text messages from Southwest and Freebird saying that the WN flight from STL to DTW was cancelled.
Normally with Freebird you get a link in your text message where you can choose the same or next day flight on any airline that you want to rebook on, and I did get that.
Then a few minutes later I got a text from Freebird customer service saying that a Delta flight from STL to DTW was the only remaining flight in the day and they were going to proactively book me on that because if they waited until after I arrived in STL there might not be enough time to book the ticket. They told me to text them back if I wanted the Delta ticket or otherwise they would void it.
I texted back that certainly I wanted the Delta ticket, and with in a few minutes they sent me the Delta PNR.
By the time WN opened the door in STL I was fully rebooked on Delta with a new Delta PNR and I had 47 minutes to make the connection from T2 E4 to T1 A2 which involved going outside security, taking a bus to terminal 1, and gifuring out that it had the unusual design of having the TSA checkpoint on the first level.
One limitation of freebird is they don't have fields to enter your KTN which is really bizarre. While getting on the bus I was checking in for the Delta flight because I wanted to make sure I got checked in before the OLCI cutoff and I could not immediately find where to enter the KTN in the Delta app check in flow.
I know also there is a nuance with Delta where if you check in on the main desktop site, it will then not let you access your mobile boarding pass in the app; so I wanted to ensure I avoided that possible pitfall.
Also I had texted my KTN to Freebird, and at the same time, they were on
hold with Delta trying to have them enter my KTN in the Delta PNR.
I told the friend I was with we should use the printed WN boarding passes with TSA Pre at the Delta terminal at STL. Typically you are able to enter any terminal and concourse with a same day boarding pass out of the same airport. We checked in at T1 TSA, and the man said we were flying on Southwest. I told him we had been rebooked on Delta, and he said he wanted to make sure we didn't have any trouble in the gate area not having a Delta boarding pass. I told him our fflight was leaving in 10 minutes, and then he said he would let us through.
We then boarded the Delta flight again making the 47 minute connection with less then 10 minutes to spare.
I then sent a Twitter direct message to Southwest asking them to refund my original ticket due to the irregular operation. I was traveling on points and my friend was on my Southwest companion pass which is a a free ticket. They said that since we had partially used the tickedts they had to process the refund through a back end mechanism and they sent me a case number but the full original 15,000 points were deposited in to my Southwest account before the end of the night.
Freebird also offered to take care of getting my Southwest refund for me, but as I am a very detail oriented person I wanted to do it myself; but many people would be very happy to have Freebird take care of these nuances and details for them.
The tickets Freebird purchased on Delta were K class fares and cost $295 each. I was able to get Delta miles for the oneway trip and get all my Southwest points back. If I had paid for the Southwest ticket, they would have also refunded the entire amount paid. So it was not a bad spend of $68 as I got about $600 in value.
It was incredible how quickly freebird handles the reaccommodation. Even if Southwest had an interline ticketing agreement with Delta, with they do not, there is no way the reaccommodation would have been processed fast enough for me to make the 47 minute connection going to another terminal and re-clearing security. The reaccommodation would have taken 5 to 10 minutes at the gate even if Southwest had there smartest quickest agenbts with no line and if they did it immediately and did not have any computer glitches and did not have to call Delta or call the internal help desk.
So a key part of Freebird is this notion you can book the new flight in 3 taps through their rebooking flow. I found the Freebird rebooking flow to be faster than other mobile booking channels.