It happened five or six times before I posted, and I tried one more time as a sanity check after posting. Anticipating there might be difficulty recreating the problem, I left the page open while heading off to work. (Of course that proved fruitless due to the rude timeout feature on a page that wasn't even part of a MySouthwest authenticated session. I therefore only spent a minute or so on looking into it further when I returned home. It was not difficult to recreate the search not updating problem.)I have successfully changed searches from RT to OW and OW to RT, so I find your statement that it is not possible quite puzzling. BTW, I've learned to ignore the RT/OW input option due to its poor implementation.That part of the problem is easily reproducible.It does sound that way, but I was trying to modify my search; that's why I posted about it. I'd have to look at whether there is a way to inadvertently submit via Continue instead of Modify, but I've not done so. Due to quickly closing the page in annoyance after the timeout message, I can't go back and confirm I copied the error message from the correct tab, or retrace my steps.My jaw still hurts from the massive contusion it suffered dropping so violently upon reading the above. With all the CPU cycles consumed by SWA's implementation of the smart city input box, it doesn't even bother to trim whitespace?

ETA: I just looked at and did a quick test of the trim function in SWA's destination_flyouts.min.js:

The RegEx above is incorrect. It "trims" 'dal ' to a character string of length four instead of length three. A web search for javascript trim prototype pretty much instantly returns a few thousand examples of trim RegEx syntax that works correctly.

I have experienced multiple problems with new Southwest Shortcut� pages. With the old SWA reservation pages I found the lowFareFinderEntry page far more usable than the main search page. The new calendar feature is a major PITA for several reasons.I'm also finding today that the new calendar results page shows no fares at all for May, while the old calendar results page does. (Today is the first time I've looked at any fares beyond December.)

There are other reasons for sessions besides your MySouthwest login - one would be so that a Customer cannot sit on seats for hours without actually making a purchase Please elaborate on how you recreated it so that I might be able to do so as well I stand corrected - apparently this has been fixed since I last used it.
I'm sorry that you don't care for it.
I didn't say we weren't working on correcting it . . .

SWAVictor,

A serious question. In this update of the website, which has clearly created a number of techinical glitches to the site, did we as consumers actually get any additional features or was this simply a 'look and feel' change which we must wait out until the glitches are corrected. I am trying to think back to the old site, and I cannot think of anything that is functionally better with this site.

lougourd99, I firmly believe the site redesign contains noteworthy benefits for the consumer. (Some of those are exceptionally poorly implemented, tested, and/or proofread, sadly.) When correctly implemented smart city input boxes are enormously beneficial. Being able to modify a search, even when it doesn't include a city that is part of one of the goofy pre-designated "city areas," is enormously beneficial. (Do a search to FLL and use the "Modify" feature to "View nearby airports." Why on earth was this city grouping feature not tossed on the redesign?) One-click change of flight search dates is partly a reversion to an older feature of the site, but now we have a choice between small date change and major date change.

Most of these enhancements are long-overdue catch up with competitors, and there is still a long way to go. I hold out hope that the use of QPX will (once the current site bugs are tamed) bring further enhancements like flexible date, alternate airport, and multi-weekend searches. Again, overdue catch up to the competition, but real benefits.

Don't forget new features like calendar export and behind the scenes changes like bringing reservations made outside an active MySouthwest session into your itinerary listing (both also long overdue). I've mentioned most of these points upthread when posting defenses of the new site when others were complaining about it. I've barely begun to look at the implementation issues, though, and that's where the new site falls seriously on its face. Word of warning to anyone with web design experience: don't dare use "View Source" without first summoning paramedics to be on standby.

If I'm thinking clearly, and I believe it's been mentioned upthread, some clear benefits are that the flight information appears on the page where you enter payment information, and the stop on continuing flights is named, albeit not until you choose the flight.

You probably started your reply before my edit above, which noted that I tested SWA's String.trim function and found it incorrectly returns 'dal ' (instead of 'dal') when asked to trim 'dal '. I saved and edited the javascript source file to include a correct trim function, ran it locally, and found the problem was still not solved. Being clueless about the overall structure of the flyout scripts, I had to resort to setting a breakpoint on the trim function, and then stepping out to the caller. (Clue #1: that was far more difficult than it should have been; trim was being called numerous times, even with just one letter typed into the input box.) Examining the calling function I found:Examining the variables I saw that b contained the characters typed into the input box and a contained an object, with a.stationName being a string of the format City, ST - AAA. That made the logic error very obvious: the code should not be trimming a.stationName, it should be trimming the user input. Rewriting the above to:(in combination with using a corrected RegEx) fixes two problems:

1. the user will no longer be told 'dal ' is not valid airport, and
2. the user's computer will no longer have to waste time trimming predefined station name values.

A few other notes: both destination_flyouts.min.js and destination_flyouts_filter.min.js" declare the incorrect string.trim prototype function. I haven't looked into whether that duplication is necessary. Also, Firefox 3.5 provides trim as a native function. I'd be inclined to test for a null String.trim before creating my own. Something similar is pretty standard practice when declaring Array.indexOf to make up for it being missing from IE.

I realize there are much bigger problems to work on, but for a developer who knows a bit about the structure of the code and who has access to the pre-min source, crossing that bug off the list would be trivial. Once I managed to de-min the source and get past the distraction of far too many calls to trim, it took less than five minutes to identify the problem, write the fix, and confirm it worked. Crossing even small bugs off the list quickly may be wise at this stage.

+1 (again). Moreover, it seems to me that ftnoob's offerings are worth a hell of a lot to Southwest in the meantime. Wow.

OK. That said, I've been having one devil of a time with the site since, I think, Wednesday. The night I had my first wait and "We'll call you back" when calling reservations. A propos of the JetBlue 10/31 $31 sale, I was looking to get back home on Southwest. Anyway, it was late that night, and the chances were greater that it was me. But the same problems are here this weekend, and I've had the time to record some issues.

One more preamble. I'm not nearly at ftnoob's or SWAVictor's level. As I am about to demonstrate so well. Somewhere along the spectrum between the Kettles and them. And I want to note that when I've had some of the repeated problems that follow, one of my remedies was to clear my cache, including using what I consider to be my most thorough cleaner available, CCleaner, formerly known as CrapCleaner. And then I started all over again, logging in etc. I also never dawdled before encountering, "Your account session has expired..."

Trying to book a revenue flight:

I first logged into MySouthwest. Definitely. Three cycles. When trying to identify TTF while booking, I kept getting, after entering the words and clicking for the next page, "The time allowed to enter security check solution has been exceeded. Reference number 100082-7715". I saw, the last cycle, that in the top right corner of that page it indicated I wasn't logged in. When I clicked on that link, it turned out that I was still logged in. Not fun to repeat the steps to get to the payment choice page again. And I got some very strange security check solution words. Not non-words, but, "harelips" and "Labes in Germany".

Trying to book a Rapid Reward:

My Southwest Login => Account Snapshot page. I clicked on Looking to use an award? => I clicked on Use Southwest SeatFinder => Plan Trip (red title) page. I entered cities and date for a one way. Clicked on Go to next step - select travel dates. (Logic problem - I selected dates on this page) => Error window. "What happened? Your account session has expired. Return to login page. Reference number 540995-1972" I clicked on the link to return to the login page. It returned me to the page with the panel about Secure Flight. I was already/still logged in. I clicked on the "Use Southwest Seatfinder" link in the panel next to it. This time I got the calendar directly, instead of the page where I had entered my cities and date. I think my date was already highlighted - I mean the one I had chosen the first cycle. It was definitely November. With date chosen, I clicked on "Go to next step - select flight" => "Your session has expired. Go back to Login Page" When I clicked on the link to go back, I was already/still logged in. I clicked on Southwest Seatfinder. => On "Plan Trip" page, it required that I enter the cities and date again. I entered cities and date. Click. => Landed on Select Flight page. I selected a flight. Clicked on "Go to next step - Price>>" => "Session expired. Return to login page." I clicked on the link to return to the login page. I was still logged in.

I quit. And called.

We are blessed by SWAVictor, ftnoob - and the FTers who submit their experiences - here. But we are in the midst of an elite class because of them. Are problems with booking Rewards pervasive this week? I think - fatigued, I admit - that I can say that I could not book a freebie online. What of the Kettles? I suppose it's likely that the masses of my ilk, and those more in the dark, are more inclined to book over the phone, anyway.

SWAVictor, I am submitting these experiences as input, and NOT asking for a response. Honestly. The questions above are rhetorical. I did solve my problems on the phone. I was the other night, and am today, willing to wait until the bugs are out. So, as they say on the TJ's commercials, "Thanks for listening".

Until the major security problem of sending out some other customer's information is fixed, I think it would be a wise precaution to avoid MySouthwest logins altogether. There is a chance that the erroneous session expired messages are the flip side of that coin, meaning you get that message right after the web site sent your info to someone else. Now that reservations are added to your itinerary list when made outside an active session, and we have to fill in purchaser information even when logged in, the only real advantage of logging in first is using stored credit card information. Not an issue if using only TTF and uTTt.

It isn't even necessary to log in to MySouthwest to book an award ticket. Just go to the award search page without logging in. After you put in the search request you'll be asked for your RR# and password. Although this will feel similar to logging in to MySouthwest, it is different; you won't have access to your "dashboard," list of itineraries, profile, etc.

Firewind, the TTF lookup page has never been aware of your MySouthwest session status. (I really wish they would make it aware so that a less onerous page can be served to logged in customers; this board even uses that concept on its search page.) The funds lookup page is pretty useless now, anyway; do your "lookups" one at a time by entering them on a payment page, you can always back out before completing the purchase if using that page just for a lookup.

Thank you. I hadn't thought that through.

ftnoob, thank you again, and again.

To your last point, I did start looking for TTF within the reservation payment page, but, not seeing some that I believed I still had (per my 8.5 x 11 college-ruled "spreadsheet"), I used as a point of departure the post by OAKman @34, above, and searched in Travel Tools.

I am even more chastened by all your advice here, and above.

One other thought... To you @73, I was going to observe that websites driven by advertising - NOT just FlyerTalk - seem to try to keep at the forefront of sending and processing capabilities with how much they feed in those banner and right banner ads (e.g., first, still ads; followed by those bizarre gyrating things; now, more movement; and getting more and more into ads that resemble full-motion TV commercials). I notice very slow loading, sometimes. I got thinking that, even if Southwest isn't fully utilizing the capacity - yet - they may have loaded a lot more (orders of magnitude?) capability for suchlike into the site with everything we can see, and it's humming behind the scenes. Haven't watched Task Manager to see what the burden is.

But then, I remembered that you have Firefox 2.0.0.20 with ads blitzed. Wonder what those graphs would look like if you didn't. (And what the loading times would be if we were on dial-up.)

An update on this issue: the new calendar page currently shows no fares for either outbound or return if your return is in May and your outbound is in any month from now through May.

A continuing issue that is costing people money. If you have paid for EBCI, you loose that money if you cancel the flight. However, if you want to change the flight and the new flight costs more money, the website will not allow you to pay for the additional costs with TTF. So you have a choice, cancel the first flight and loose your EBCI payment and rebook and pay the additional costs with TTF, or change the flight but be forced to pay for the additional costs with a credit card.

In addition to the problem mentioned above with the fare calendar going completely blank if either the outbound or return trip is in May 2010, I'm getting a blank calendar for one specific route if either the outbound or return trip is in either October or November (2009). The blank dates have a "Selected fare is unavailable" hover message. Flights are actually available on those dates, the calendar is simply incorrect. It doesn't matter whether I start at the calendar entry page or go to the calendar after first looking at fares.

With probably over 4,000 possible routes to price, it seems unlikely I stumbled on one isolated case of this problem. Has anyone else seen it? I could run a script that would check them all so as to make a complete list of the problem city pairs, but I'll leave that to SWA. Even looking at one calendar per second it would take over an hour just to check every city pair.

One thing that is disheartening about all this is that if SWA had done a proper public beta before deciding the revamped site was ready for gated rollout, we could be posting enthusiastic encouraging comments instead of angry comments. Rather than being negative we'd be saying things like "this redesign has a lot of potential; it should be a very nice site when you finish working out the kinks." OAKman nailed it way back on August 15 when he said "In my opinion, the new interface is not ready for primetime and Southwest should address the problems before continuing to roll it out."