Originally Posted by GeorgeJ
The Customer Relations rep told me that there was this particular policy..that if the customer were delayed between 1-3 hours, she could offer a $50 gift certificate as compensation..
Here's the whole story for those who wanted more information...Flight 652 from Las Vegas to San Diego was supposed to leave at 8:10AM. The website and flight departure boards at the airport all said that the flight was on time. At about 7:30AM the gate agents announced a 1 hour delay; incoming flight from Kansas City was in the air and would be late arriving. Well, that flight was scheduled to leave Kansas City at 4:40AM local time (Las Vegas local time). So they knew much earlier than 7:30AM that it was going to be late in arriving. The gate agents blamed "weather" for the delay. Around 8:30 they announced that our flight was cancelled. They said the flight from KC was cancelled even though they said it was in the air and had a weather delay.
Well, Southwest 652 was not cancelled between Kansas City and Las Vegas on 5/3, so it does sound like one of the agents was lying to you or did not have his/her facts straight. The MCI-LAS flight was delayed 1 hr, but it sounds like Southwest needed the aircraft in Sacramento and thus your LAS-SAN flight was cancelled and the aircraft was ferried from LAS-SMF as Southwest 8501.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...256Z/KMCI/KLAS
Now, it is possible some m/x issue came up in the air and they were going to ferry the aircraft to SMF for repairs, but doesn't it seem more likely they would just fix it at LAS if that were the case??
BTW, I would not expect unsolicited compensation. Family members recently had a 9 + hr maintenance cancellation/rebooking delay on another carrier, and no compensation was offered apart from a food voucher. However, contacting customer relations with a legitimate complaint almost always yields some sort of result, even if it is just a goodwill voucher around $50 as you were offered.