Hurricane Irma cancellations

[B-Red]

I have a flight scheduled this Saturday to Ft. Myers.  Is there any advantage to waiting until Southwest cancels the flight, or should I just cancel in advance?  If I reschedule, it has to be later than the 14 days currently allowed with the voluntary cancellations.

My "wanna get away" flights are a mixture of points and paid by credit card.

[franktravel]

Here is something to note:

Failure to Operate as Scheduled

(1) Canceled Flights or Irregular Operations.

In the event Carrier cancels or fails to operate any flight according to Carrier’s published schedule, or changes the schedule of any flight, Carrier will, at the request of a Passenger with a confirmed Ticket on such flight, take one of the following actions:

(i) Transport the Passenger at no additional charge on Carrier’s next flight(s) on which space is available to the Passenger’s intended destination, in accordance with Carrier’s established reaccommodation practices; or

(ii) Refund the unused portion of the Passenger’s fare in accordance with Section 4c.

4c. Refunds

(1) Refundable Tickets.

(i) Ticket changes and exchanges within the same reservation will result in the initial Ticket being applied as the form of payment for the new Ticket. The fare paid for unused travel by Passengers who purchase fully refundable, unrestricted Tickets, including taxes, security fees, and Passenger Facility Charges, may, for any reason and upon surrender or cancellation of the unused Ticket, either be refunded if canceled and refunded instead of exchanging or changing the Ticket or applied as travel credit toward the purchase of future travel for the originally ticketed Passenger in accordance with the form of payment utilized for the Ticket. Such refund or travel credit must be requested within the Ticket’s eligibility period. Refund or credit requests will not be honored after the Ticket’s expiration date.

(ii) If a fully refundable fare segment on a reservation is not changed or canceled at least ten (10) minutes prior to departure and the Customer does not travel, all segments associated with the reservation are canceled, and funds associated with the fully refundable fare segment(s) are held as travel credit for use by the Passenger on Southwest Airlines. Reservations paid for with a Southwest® gift card will have the amount applied from the Southwest® gift card held as travel funds for use by the Customer on a future Southwest Airlines flight.

(iii) When the Ticket combines a fully refundable fare with a Wanna Get Away nonrefundable fare and the Passenger does not travel on the Wanna Get Away segment and has not canceled, the reservation at least ten (10) minutes prior to the scheduled departure time, all unused travel funds will be forfeited or held in accordance with Section 2a(2)(iii) and all remaining segments of the reservation are canceled.

[chgoflyer · Accepted solution]

WGA flights:

A points cancellation puts the points back into your account, regardless of whether you or Southwest cancel the flight. No benefit if they cancel.

The credit card cancellation becomes a credit (usable for travel by the same person for a year from the original booking date) if you cancel, but becomes a refund back to your credit card if  Southwest does.

A travel advisory allows rebooking the same city pairs (and possibly some limited alternates) at no extra cost, but within 14 days. There's a chance that window could be extended if they adjust the advisory at some point.

If you need to travel the same route I'd wait and see if they alter the advisory to extend the dates. Otherwise, wait and see if Southwest cancels, but if they do not (and you don't wish to travel Saturday) cancel the flights yourself -- at least 10 minutes before scheduled departure. (And don't wait until the very last minute, in case you have trouble online and have to call to cancel.)  Make sure you keep a record of the cancellation confirmation.

[B-Red]

Thank you!  This information helps tremendously.