betsifur

I just got a slew of emails about my kids Thanksgiving travel. They had moved my son, daughter in law and infant to a flight with an overnight layover in Denver. They made some small changes to my daughter's flights, except her Denver connection was now leaving 2 hours before she would arrive. My daughter's boyfriend was suddenly starting in Denver, rather than SLC, where they all live.

I called the Southwest number, but while waiting for a callback noticed that some non-stop flights had opened up for both days, at way cheaper points amounts than I'd previously booked these flights. I booked new non-stops for all of them, cancelled all the old tickets, and netted 81,015 points in the process. Southwest did call me back, but hung up before I could speak with someone. I do want to call back tomorrow to see about all the Early Bird fees I paid (but if those are lost, so be it), and see if they can tie together the flights coming here, so there are no more mix ups. I have a feeling if I'd spoken with someone, they would gladly change my tickets for "free" while keeping all those excess points.

ave1024

OMG they really screwed me up on Thanksgiving weekend. Check out what they did for me.

I had four people flying on non stop flights. Two paid, two companion. One companion is a 5 year old.

They moved my 5 year old to the non stop flight without moving his mother and accompanying reservation to the flight. Mom got moved to a different connecting flight. DUMB because how do they expect the 5 year old to fly by himself. DUMB because even if the 5 year old could fly by himself, they won't let him on the plane as companion fare without the paid accompanying flyer!

Then the other flying pair, they moved the companion fare to the non stop and they elected to move ME the paid fare to the connecting flight. Once again DUMB because the companion can't fly by himself. And even worse I am A-LIST. My status as A-LIST can't get seats on the nonstop flight when I know they are giving seats away to 5 year olds and companion fares.

Really southwest?

Marcus Harper

1-800-435-9792 will help you more than complaining on the internet. You’re Alist so your wait time will be minimal. I’m sure all the changes are made without any human interaction but if you talk to a representative nicely, they’ll be more than happy to assist you to flights that work for your travel needs.

synergistic

I needed to cancel a reservation last night that was throwing an error every time I tried to change it or cancel it online. 60 minute wait for A-List! I declined the callback thinking maybe it would be a little faster, but no such luck. He was, fortunately, able to find and cancel the fight in mere moments, and I think he might have been glad to have an easy one to handle.

ave1024

Actually Nope! They weren't able to do anything i couldn't have done already on my own and were pretty much useless. I wanted to get on the flight that the two "companions" were on. They refused to put me on as the flight was full. They should have bumped somebody else frankly, I guess status means nothing to them. I asked them three time how does their system put a 5 year old by himself and two companions on a flight with no matching paid fare. I got the usual *shrug* canned response from them. Their system needs an overhaul.

willywilkes

I get this stuff is complex and don't really blame them - coding for these various cases is wild I am sure. But dang they gave me a real doozy. My outbound for Thanksgiving was supposed to be LAS > BUF with layover in PHX. Well they changed it to multi-city, PHX > MDW > BUF as first trip. Second trip is LAS > PHX, same day, but gets to PHX 2.5 hours after the first leg departs. I reached out to the folks on twitter, they are usually fast. The good news is there was not previously a nonstop LAS>BUF on this date and there is now, so getting moved to that is actually great for me!

lougord99

Neither Southwest, nor any other airline is going to 'bump' a confirmed passenger because you have status.

ursine1

As the system makes all these changes, presumably there's an algorithm that decides who gets rebooked on the available non-stops and who gets rebooked on connecting flights. My guess is that it's based on original purchase date, but it could just as well be based on fare paid, or even status.

Often1

These are neither screw ups nor glitches. They are the algorithm used for proposed rebooking.

ursine1

I'm not sure I'd say there are no screw ups. Booking a companion on a different flight than the companion pass holder is a screw up. The algorithm isn't working ideally, it's screwing up itineraries as it does the rebooking.

olouie

So much this, if the algo makes the rebooking a violation of SW terms then it’s a screw up. How do they expect companions to fly without the pass holders? Yeah. That doesn’t pass the sniff test.

joshua362

As I said here, the complex algorithm is working as designed to rebook automatically but the PNR's that it touches could have easily been filtered...

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/32712587-post7.html

rsteinmetz70112

Yesterday evening I got two batches of changes that take my schedule changes through December 9th. To me it doesn't look like the schedule has been changed much past that. I'm dreading more changes. I have some travel schedule around Christmas. Some of it is time sensitive, I may not be able to make a new schedule work. One of the changes Thanksgiving week required me to move my flight by a couple of days, I can't do that for some of the Christmas flights. Thinking about it I'm surprised they made changes for Thanksgiving week which could severely disrupt long laid plans.

Franklin7777

The changes are rolling now... I have a ton of DCA-STL pairs that are slowly getting decimated. Started earlier in the week w/ November flights, now done through 12/18 with new ones popping on a daily basis. Went from 4-ish nonstops a day to 1 or none. My evening nonstops have been changed to morning or ridiculous connections. These cuts are SEVERE. Out of the 7 so far that have seen changes, all are worse and only ~3.5 are flights I would even consider taking. I'm expecting the 8th one (and the Christmas/New Year) flights to get similarly screwed in the next few days.

It looks like a majority of the options now connect through ATL or MDW - is WN morphing into a hub-and-spoke system now with COVID?

Often1

Agreed. Even though the strategic goal is not hub-and-spoke, with the demand for air travel remaining in the bottom of the tank, the only real way to move passengers is via unintentional hubs. Without a solid base of international business traffic in its network, this is a mid-term (24-36 months post-effective vaccine) problem.

At the same time, blocked middle seats are also affecting route viability. Until an effective, cheap & simple pre-flight Covid-test makes its way to domestic routes, this is one of the problems for which it is hard to find a solution.