Is Southwest canceling many flights?
 

Haven't flown anywhere in 14 months, but I've been following the news and I know that all airlines have been canceling and rescheduling flights throughout the pandemic. We are hoping to go to STL in June and see attractive flights and fares for the one non-stop (2 options returning), but are concerned about the flights being canceled or rescheduled to less appealing times, or changed to 1 stops.

I know some of the airlines have "Black Mondays" when they cancel a bunch of flights a few weeks out, is SW doing this or can we generally rely on the June schedule being pretty reliable?

Thanks for the input!

PM sent.

Good reason to expect SWA to bulk up leisure destinations. CA, TX, Hawaii and FL are expected beneficiaries. BOS-STL might be exposed in that game plan.

I had a June flight canceled over the weekend, and several other people I know did as well. If that was the bulk of the schedule change pushed through over the weekend, then the current June schedule is probably relatively stable at this point. Always possible they could always change again though.

Thanks for the PM and advice and real world results. We'll likely wait until next Monday to book based on the current info.

I don't think June and beyond are safe yet. There are still lots of frequency jumps and route restorations showing in schedule for June 6th and beyond. For example, SFO-LAX is only 2-3x daily for month of May and then jumps up to 6x daily on June 6th. An example of route restorations showing on June 6th include STL-DTW/CLE/PIT/PHL/CMH/IND. A number of these will likely get pushed back yet again. I would only count on flights being "safe" if they are before June 6th.

I have an STL-BOS trip mid June and I just got a schedule change email this evening. Email only showed the return having changed, but when looking at options, the outbound no longer exists for booking but my itinerary still has it. I guess I'll see another email soon.

The new options don't really work for my schedule so I'll either need to pay for another night in a hotel or find another airline. It's too bad AA's nonstop STL-BOS doesn't start until November.

Yes SW has been cancelling flights. When I went to Las Vegas last year SW changed my schedule so I was able to add more nights as a result. For my LAX flight SW allowed me to change to an earlier flight on the outbound so I chose to get a connection via PHX that would let me spend time in the AMEX Lounge for a few hours.

The return 8:30 PM Flight was cancelled so I am taking the 6:30 PM flight.

My June 9 flight from Burbank to Nashville was cancelled today. I don't know what that means entirely, but I know they did SOME early June cancellations today.

I appreciate all the feedback and will continue to monitor this thread and the website until the upcoming weekend. Or beyond

Well, it looks like WN schedule has now been updated through June 19th and they are loading June updates one week at a time. I had been relying on Google Flights to search WN schedule, but it's pretty clearly not keeping up with schedule updates and still has old schedule loaded for June 6th and beyond. It looks like STL-PIT/CLE/PHL/MSY/PDX come back in June while STL-IND/CMH/DTW/MYR/SAT/SFO continue to have restarts pushed back.

I just got another flight change email last night for June, so appears I was wrong and they are still pushing updates (as others in the thread have confirmed).

It's very likely these changes will continue to roll out, affecting the schedule through summer.

Yep, they were loaded through June 19th this afternoon, and now look to have gone up through June 26th as of this evening. I'm using OAK-LAX as a proxy as it had been loaded at 9x daily for June, but they are updating it to 5x daily for June which is the same as May schedule (although it's far more morning heavy in June and afternoon/evening heavy in May).

So only canceling 44% of the intra-CA flights. Lovely.