joshua362

Wow. To me, this is clearly the beginning of the end where WN gradually joins the idiocy of its competitors, slowly and over time. How sad....

PHLflying

Well I'm a little torn over what to think on this. On one hand, for the first 1-3 years of me flying WN, I thought it was setup the way that it is going to (only the traveler can use their TTFs later). So I've been used to this idea, even if it was incorrectly in my mind.

On the other hand, yes, some flexibility is going away. I can't book a trip for my spouse, that she may or may not be able to make, and know that at least I can use the funds later. Its this today, just like the free bags went from 3 to 2 a few years ago - what is next??????????


Only a matter of time till the post "Creative ways around TTF restriction" exists - i.e. book a fully refundable ticket for TSA purposes, but use the one with a friend's TTF funds for flying on...

I have seen lots of craigslist posts for TTF funds, especially around Baltimore's site - however, usually they are for "this credit expires in 5 days, only use if you are flying by then" type things, for only $20-40 under the price - I don't think many folks had use for these resells......

ftnoob

The only surprise in this news is that we have any warning at all. Recent devaluations have generally been more sneaky.

The handwriting on the wall for this change has been emerging for a long time. Remember, funds tracking switched from purchaser-based to passenger-based circa October, 2008. They didn't do that just for kicks. It has been nearly fourteen months since the WestJet code share was put on hold to focus on "near-term revenue opportunities." It has been over five months since Beckles alerted us to SWA's plans for "Quarterly releases of upgrades to Southwest.com with each upgrade bringing new opportunities for ancillary revenue." That didn't mean just EarlyBird and trip insurance, folks.

Of late my self-talk about formally posting this as a prediction changed from "don't do it just in case they haven't thought of it;" to "should the timeline of the prediction be that it will happen by the end of this year or within one year?

By the middle of last year I had cut back booking "possible" trips on SWA after seeing previous devaluations. Due to a growing expectation that this change was around the corner and would appear unannounced, the last time I booked a paid trip I wasn't pretty sure about was last September (during the 30/60/90 sale).

BTW, has anyone seen an actual announcement (meaning a blog post or a press release)?

ftnoob

What has been in the CoC forever and not followed strictly? If you mean this rule change under discussion I have to disagree. According to SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO. CONTRACT OF CARRIAGE — PASSENGER SIXTH REVISED, as of April 23, 2010 (when Article 35, Carriage of Children was revised) the refund language (which hadn't changed since October 1, 2009) did not explicitly limit funds reuse to the same passenger. The current (Seventh Revised) CoC appears to be a complete overhaul (versus the numerous frequent lesser updates). The Seventh Revised was perhaps issued sometime in June of this year. It currently carries a July 14, 2010 revision date. (In another unfriendly change, the change log has been eliminated from the document, so it is nearly impossible to determine what part(s) of the contract changed from June to July.)

Refunds (and TTF) are governed by the CoC. The Sixth Revised Coc concluded with Article 127, "Right to Change Contract," issued and effective 13-March-2000. It specifically reserves the right (where not prohibited by federal law) to "change, delete, or add to any of the terms" of the CoC.

73G

I don't like the change but consider it a minor cut rather than a major one. (But it's easy for me to call it minor as I don't often mix people's funds.) Looks like a fairly new policy change--I have a reservation made July 1 that doesn't show it but one made yesterday that does.

Maybe the primary motivation is to cut down the volume of ticket changes somewhat by going after heavy duty reservation changers who slosh funds around (perfectly legitimately) among family/friends. I can't imagine that there are a lot of Craigslist sales, and the sale of funds disappeared some time ago from Ebay as well. I'd certainly like to hear the rationale for this change--if there's a good one, one that can support the argument that SWA can be a little stronger and more competitive as a result, then I'd be more understanding.

I'm actually a little relieved that there's no direct implication of a change fee with this change. (The thread about Denver specific advertising of no change fees helps to back that up for the medium term.) I still think that a no-show fee that would take effect exactly 2 hours after departure would be reasonable to cut down on people making and then totally skipping out on reservations only to recover the funds days later. Such a no-show fee could be pinned on the more stringent bumping rules that are currently proposed by the USDOT.

SAT Lawyer

I tend to use Ticketless Travel Funds in a fungible manner when it comes to my family's travel so this change is very unwelcome.

ftnoob

Neither.

Funds are already tracked (and counted) separately by passenger: each passenger on a multi-pax PNR already has their own funds balance and funds expiration date.

Currently if you try to use funds from an eight-pax PNR you will see eight separate TTF listings in the applied payments screen (assuming the new booking is for enough passengers to allow that many payment sources). Those would be listed in the format QABCDE-1234, QABCDE-5678, etc.

When this switch is flipped, what each passenger will be able to use is the amount that remains in their own funds balance. In your example that could be more than or less than 1/8th of the funds on the entire PNR. The most common reason for a difference to arise would be that one passenger already dipped into their balance.

lougord99

I have a good one for your spreadsheets. For any flights that you have already booked partially using TTF from others, if you cancel those flights you will need to figure out which portion of those flights was purchased with your money or TTF's and which portion with others.

I wonder if the check TTF page will tell you that.

freeflyin

This is the most disturbing part of this change in terms. It would appear the ticket cost is completely lost if the named pax cannot utilize it before expiration.

I too,guide friends and family toward WN simply because of the flexibility of travel funds.With this feature gone, fares become the only factor when choosing an airline

expert7700

ftnoob,

I think I have seen what you're referring to. Sometimes applying a ticketless travel fund that was for 2 people to a new reservation for one person shows two 'buckets' of money being applied from the same pnr #. It never dawned on me that I could be shorting myself by trusting the $$ amount applied at booking, then discarding the old PNR # thinking it was fully redeemed.

If Southwest is going to track things this way, they really need to have the view PNR funds/balance option break down and show the balance per passsenger. It is also the responsible time to TRACK & SHOW TTFs when a passenger logs in. Not just for the person who was logged into swa.com when booking, but instead show all TTF funds and LUV vouchers available for your RR #, regardless of who booked them. Southwest is demonstrating by this rule change that they have the sophistication & technology in place to track/enforce PNR funds by passenger. If they do not start showing these to the passengers when asked/clicked, it'll be obvious even to the occasional family flyer that they don't show them because they are hoping they have been forgotten and will expire.

My suggestion to the SWA Lurkers on the forum is still to implement the rule change stating that "one of the passengers named on the PNR must = one of the passengers travelling". It keeps it in line with what they seem to be aiming for (prevent resales), but it prevents frustration from the families who travel Southwest occasionally.

jrpaguia

I hope not. If so, then WN is doing nothing but alienating their most loyal customers and supporters. Sloshing funds around was one of the joys/conveniences of dealing with WN. ... were they thinking?

PhoenixRev

This is disappointing.

I live in Arizona and my spouse lives in SoCal. We are often changing tickets around on WN when we have a change of who is going to travel this time.

I can't begin to count the number of times I have canceled a ticket in my name and reapplied the funds to a ticket for my other half.

Other than the hope of garnering some free cash when people don't spend the funds or forget about them, why tick off your loyal customers with this change?

nsx

That's the only reason. Southwest must have hired someone from outside the corporate culture who came up with this lame-brained idea. Either that or Southwest didn't understand that this would make any difference to customers. Nah, not even a recent hire at Southwest would be THAT dumb.

FCfree

It appears that the rules have changed. I just bought tickets today (7/17/2010) and there is a new message:

Effective January 28, 2011, unused travel funds may only be applied toward the purchase of future travel for the indivdual named on the ticket.

I saw that Allegiant Airlines recently did this with their TripFlex, where a pax pays $8 for the privilege of having fully changable tickets with no change fee (just pay the fare difference). Maybe Southwest got the idea from Allegiant?

FCfree

It could be that they didn't like people selling the unused TTF on eBay and Craigslist?

Its not a big deal for me because I buy enough tickets, but if my wife and/or daughter get $10 of TTF because of a price drop, that means they have to fly again within a year to make use of it.

I wonder if they got this idea from Allegiant Airlines, who first introduced Trip Flex (at a fee of $7.99 per ticket) to make them fully changable, like Southwest. However, then in July, they also went with this "can't change the name" thing.