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Cancellation

salimin2
Explorer C

How many times I can cancel the flights with Southwest airlines and can get the travel funds against the cancellation?

7 REPLIES 7

Re: Cancellation

franktravel
Aviator B

No limit. 

Re: Cancellation

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A
Solution

But travel funds still expire one year from when you booked the original flight. Rebooking and canceling does not extend the expiration. Rebook and cancel as much as you want, but only within the one year period. 

Re: Cancellation

salimin2
Explorer C

Thanks. That sounds perfect answer.

Re: Cancellation

jackiereed6
Explorer C

Could you rebook your flight with residual travel funds and instead of cancelling it, just change the flight and pay fare differences for the dates needed?

 

Ex: I have to rebook my flight before 8/22/18, but I need to fly 8/24/18-8/26/18. If I book a flight that is before 8/22, can I then change my flight to the later dates and pay the fare difference? Not cancel it, but just change it. Will they say I can't because the funds expire, even thought I booked the dates to fly before it expired? I just hate that the funds would expire literally days before I need to use them. I don't fly much, so it's a shame. From what I have seen on here, SW doesn't seem to budge on extending, also, paying $100 to extend would literally defeat the purpose of extending since that's more than half the cost of the flight cost.

 

(Hopefully that made sense?) 

Re: Cancellation

dfwskier
Aviator A

Morning.

 

You can  cancel your flight and use your travel fund balance (plus $ I think you are saying).

 

Which Is identical in practice to changing your exisiting flight(s) and adding $ becasue the new flights cost more. 

 

You can do both by logging in to your Southwest account,  going down the left side of the page to  my flights, clicking on upcoming, and then clicking on the flight you want to change/cancel . Again you can do either at this point

 

It is unclear if you are dealing with an upcoming one year anniversary on your travel fund $ . If so,

please remeber that travel funds expire one year from the time the original ticket was bought, and flights using those dollars must be complete by that date.

 

If that is the case, and your outbound flight is within the 12 month period, but the return is not, then my advice would be to purchase two one way tickets. The first of which would allow you to use the travel funds before they expire.

 

If you cancel OR change you can do pretty much anthing you want,  pick different cities, travel before the dates on the old ticket, or travel on dates after the original ticket. The name of the traveler however cannot change.

Re: Cancellation

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@jackiereed6 wrote:

Could you rebook your flight with residual travel funds and instead of cancelling it, just change the flight and pay fare differences for the dates needed?

 

Ex: I have to rebook my flight before 8/22/18, but I need to fly 8/24/18-8/26/18. If I book a flight that is before 8/22, can I then change my flight to the later dates and pay the fare difference? Not cancel it, but just change it. Will they say I can't because the funds expire, even thought I booked the dates to fly before it expired? I just hate that the funds would expire literally days before I need to use them. I don't fly much, so it's a shame. From what I have seen on here, SW doesn't seem to budge on extending, also, paying $100 to extend would literally defeat the purpose of extending since that's more than half the cost of the flight cost.

 

(Hopefully that made sense?) 


I'm not quite sure I (or @dfwskier) followed:

  • If you are asking can you book a trip with soon expiring travel funds and add new money that for a trip that is days before the expiration, then change the whole thing to be after the expiration, the answer is "no" - that old travel fund will expire prior to travel, and adding the new money to an old travel fund takes on the oldest expiration date when you cancel that flight.
  • I haven't actually done this myself so I'm not sure - the payment for the reissuance of the voucher is $100 (at least we hear it is right now) and you get back $150 of voucher, then it's worth it as long as you'll use the voucher before that also eventually expires. At some point it isn't worth the time on the phone, but wherever you set that limit for yourself choose accordingly. It is possible to use your hack described above to combine multiple travel funds, so that you only pay the $100 once and get a combined voucher instead of several smaller ones, if that helps.

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.

Re: Cancellation

chgoflyer
Aviator A
Solution

@jackiereed6 wrote:

Could you rebook your flight with residual travel funds and instead of cancelling it, just change the flight and pay fare differences for the dates needed?

 

Ex: I have to rebook my flight before 8/22/18, but I need to fly 8/24/18-8/26/18. If I book a flight that is before 8/22, can I then change my flight to the later dates and pay the fare difference? Not cancel it, but just change it. Will they say I can't because the funds expire, even thought I booked the dates to fly before it expired? I just hate that the funds would expire literally days before I need to use them. I don't fly much, so it's a shame. From what I have seen on here, SW doesn't seem to budge on extending, also, paying $100 to extend would literally defeat the purpose of extending since that's more than half the cost of the flight cost.

 

(Hopefully that made sense?) 


 

That does make sense, but unfortunately the answer is no. The system won't let you book (or change to) any flight that takes place after your funds will be expired.