Appletom

Thoughts that didn't fit well in my most recent post:

An A-Lister flying on a BS ticket taking his CP - and the CP is can't board with the BS A-Lister? This has to be the least thought out portion of the changes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I predict this rule will go away quickly. First informally by GA's, then with a disclaimer in the rules and regulations, then eventually A-Lister's bringing a CP will get the CP's BP to have the next highest number.

How could the acronym for Business Select have been missed in all of SWA's research? They could have chosen Business Deluxe and people would shorten it to BD. They could have chosen Business Enhanced (BE). Or Business Premier (BP). Or . . . well, I'm sure many descriptions could have been chosen over BS.

I already found a stupid: I have one OW Freedom award (leftover reinstated pre-capacity control) and one standard RT award. I cannot convert my single RT standard to a OW freedom.

To use a freedom reward, you must go in take the extra steps to convert the two standard awards, the system won't just accept the two standard awards.

I wonder if a freedom award can be converted back to two standard awards? I don't have enough credits to check.

On the conversion page SWA warns you NOT to convert standard to freedom for ATA code shared flights. The warning is in bold and underlined.

This topic appears to be the fastest growing topic on the FT SWA board. There are only eight topics (with a reply in the past year) with higher post counts and the youngest of those is over 21 days old. This topic is currently about 21 hours old!

Nevada1K

I thought Appletom did a nice analysis of the changes, and I especially agree with his observation regarding today, yesterday and years ago.

As an adjunct to Appletom's post, I would also add: what has not changed:

Change Fees. There's been considerable speculation on FT that change fees would be implemented in some form. I think that is off the table for a long time (I hesitate to say "forever") as WN has made a pretty strong commitment to no change fees:
Who wins: Everybody.
Who loses: Nobody.

Nevada1K

On Tuesday of this week, I extended an expired award for $50. This was an award that expired last January and must have been my last "old" Blackout Date-type award; when it reactivated it was listed as a "Freedom Award" -- before they announced the new program.

While I do see the option to convert Standard Awards to Freedom Awards, I do not see any option in my account to convert this Freedom Award back to two Standard Awards. Perhaps when one actually converts two Standard Awards to a Freedom, the option to convert back will also exist... but I would have thought they would have announced that.

Also, there seems to be a glitch in their A-List tracking system. MySouthwest page tells me I am A-List qualified and that my Qualification Date was November 8, 2007 and my Expiration Date is November 8, 2008. In the flights flown 11/08/07-11/08/08 section, it already shows 1 flight credit (which has not occurred) and that I need 31 more by 11/02/2008. It appears to be giving me credit for a flight I flew on 11/02/2007, before the program was announced, but it doesn not give me credit for a flight I took on 11/05/2007.

Tino

Do you mean the removal of the capacity controls that were just added two years ago?

The simultaneous creation of Freedom Awards and the decimation of the Standard Award availability (as shown in a parallel thread) is a 50% devaluation of the program. In just about every comparison, Southwest's program is now inferior to the legacy programs.

I fly frequently, and I have been voting with my dollars. Several years ago, I was 95% Southwest for business and leisure. Recently, I have been flying legacy for business and Southwest for leisure. These changes will send me to the legacies for almost all of my flying, except for rock bottom Ding fares.

Tino

Thanks.

I have been lurking, but I cannot hold back when my former favorite company (I was a 10 year CP holder, shareholder, you name it) continues to stupidly dismantle what was the world's best frequent flyer program.

People here are even defending the "Freedom" Awards! Are there that many undercover Southwest employees on the board?

iahphx

Well, UA's Economy Plus is an entirely different animal from what WN is doing here. AirTran's approach is closer, but still significantly different: anyone can buy a seat assignment in their program, but here only the full fare pax can do it at a price that would make sense. And AirTran is selling you a seat assignment; WN is just selling you a better place on line.

I have no doubt that people who are spending other people's money prefer non-egalitarian ff programs. I just don't think WN is offering enough to entice those folks. The new program simple isn't "elite" enough (and it's also not intuitive to those unfamiliar with WN's idiosyncratic policies).

I do think WN hit a home run with its new "numbered" boarding system to prevent the silly pre-lines at the gates. THAT benefits pretty much everyone, and makes the airline more attractive to everyone, including biz travellers. Yesterday's announcement seems to only really benefit the biz traveller who doesn't currently fly WN much and will now give them a shot. I think those folks are limited in number.

Beckles

Unless you buy the conspiracy theory that standard availability has been cut, the changes announced yesterday are nothing but good.

BTW, I just checked MCI-LAX on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after, by far two of the busiest travel days of the year. I couldn't get an award for the Sunday after (I actually already had a standard award booked for that day, that I l converted to a paid ticket when I bought it for $99). For the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I have three flight choices to fly MCI-LAX. I really doubt I would find award availability on any other airline for that day without going to a rule buster.

Appletom

LOL - those are the only capacity controls SWA has. And yes, I believe they were added about two years ago. Today is an improvement over yesterday, not an improvement over two years ago.

I'm having trouble getting my point across. At the risk of repeating myself, today is an improvement over yesterday, not an improvement over two years ago.

A - Two years ago you could use your reward on any flight, except six or so black out days, if there was an open seat.
B - Yesterday you could use a reward only if there were reward seats available. In theory you could use them on blackout days, but in reality?
C - Today you can, once again, use your rewards on any flight, except six or so black out days, if there is an open seat.

Option C is better than option B. Option C is not better than option A, and option B is definitely not better than option A; but option A was taken off the table a long time ago and nobody ever thought it would return. And no, hoping it would return isn't the same as thinking it would return.

GoSpurs

OLCI this morning at the stroke of departure less 24 hours yielded an A23 out of SAT and an A19 on my connecting flight. I can live with this and actually look forward to a more relaxing trip. My CP for the past two years has been primarily credit card miles from Mrs. GoSpurs business, not BIS.

The program enhancements do make sense for all the positive reasons mentioned. As airline margins get squeezed from all directions, SW still has a good program compared to others. My Delta miles get more worthless almost every day.

toomanybooks

MCO-MDW is still more than 50% open for RR Standard Awards departing the day before Thanksgiving and returning Sat. or Mon. I consider that pretty fair treatment by an airline for that route.

Oddly, Freedom Awards are NOT available. Strange, no?

Vlaka

OKAY…let me understand this. I am on the “A-List” and I did OLCI exactly 24 hours in advance and I checked in for ALB-BWI and got 16Ar. My connection from BWI-PHX shows 16Ar.

Does the fact that my check in shows the “r” after it mean that WN checked me in already? If so in what order do they do the check in? Is it by RR number or alphabetically?

If the timing of OLCI for “A-List”ers is no longer first come first served, then is it possible that WN could check in an “A-List”er and they would end up with a “B”?

Lastly is WN assigning the first 15 “A”s to the Business Select seats? If they are it may be worth the extra cash for the ticket.

mctrees02

Maybe you'll get lucky...and Southwest will re-design their planes and create a legitimate first class.

Then, maybe they'll start boarding you in groups...oh wait they're already doing that now with BS, A-list, numbered groups, etc. They just have a more efficient way of moving you onto the plane instead of having somebody call out, "Group 1...Group 2..." without anything resembling an organized system.

After that, maybe they'll stop making a profit on a consistent basis and have to hope that the government bails them out.

Once all of that takes place...then it will be just flying any other legacy airline.

I sure hope I never see another "open seating" commercial on TV after today. They've effectively "altered" this policy and to advertise it as true open seating in the future would be an outright lie. Southwest had a very good product in place and their primary financial concern was fuel costs. I was ok with the incrimental fare increases because it was what the market dictated. Now they are making a bold, risky play (good for them) in an attempt to grasp a chunk of a new market (biz travellers) that they 1) aren't familiar with and 2) aren't a major player in. Maybe it works...maybe it doesn't...we'll find out soon enough. Best of luck WN!

FCfree

I checked out the new account management dashboard this morning to see how the "A-List" count would be displayed. Southwest and I came to the same count (I'm 5 short).

The actual calculation is more complex than what you see on the web site. Since you know what additional flights you are planning (Southwest knows about the booked ones, but not the unbooked ones), keep your own spreadsheet to figure out how flights will roll in and roll out of the count. I found that I only need 3 flights above what I know I will be flying to hit the 32 segment target by the end of the year.

I did a quick price check for December flights and found the date/time that I most desire is HIGHER on Southwest ($278 with taxes) than it is on United ($218). Of course, United still loses out on the business because of the pesky change fee.

I do hope that, as said above, the number of BS tickets plus the number of A-listers on a flight is kept to about 30, so that those that check-in at 23:59:59 will still be getting a BP in the range of A30-A40. It would appear that gone are the days of buying the rock bottom fare, being less than a 32-segment flyer and still scoring the ultimate exit row seat, 12F.

AgentOfEntropy

I checked in for tomorrow's 6:20am flight at 6:20am this morning. This is a flight that usually isn't very full at all, but I also got the 16r on my boarding pass. Based on this, I'd say that its likely that A1-A15 are for BS, then a block is held for A-listers (probably just enough for every A-lister reserved for the flight 36 hours ahead of time). I further suspect that an an A-lister, your number is assigned from the A-list block based on when you print your boarding pass. Would be interesting to know for sure though.

normalone

It sounds like (based on the limited experience of those checking in today) that A1-A15 are being held for Business Select fares....so what happens on flights where there are no (or less than 15) BS fares purchased? Does the first non A-list/non-BS fare customer to check in still get A16 or do they get a lower number?