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Southwest Won't let you travel twice in a day - Ruined Travel Plans

dvmoody
Explorer C

Bought a ticket for an early morning flight (8am) from Burbank to San Francisco that Southwest cancelled. When I called to find out why, they say it was cancelled because I had another Southwest flight for later that evening (6:30pm + time zone) from Honolulu to Kona. Southwest calls it a duplicate \ double booking and refuse to sell me the ticket because of their policy. Apparently, they have a policy against 2 flights in one day and they say that it is their system that does this and humans cannot override. I thought computers only did what humans program them to do??? Anyway, Basically Southwest WILL NOT ALLOW you to fly on their planes twice in a day with separate reservations. Denial of service for ZERO reason and it cost them this (now former) loyal customer - which they apparently don't care about. THANKS FOR RUINING MY TRAVEL PLANS SOUTWEST!!!

 

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2 REPLIES 2

Re: Southwest Won't let you travel twice in a day - Ruined Travel Plans

chgoflyer
Aviator A
Solution

@dvmoody wrote:

Bought a ticket for an early morning flight (8am) from Burbank to San Francisco that Southwest cancelled. When I called to find out why, they say it was cancelled because I had another Southwest flight for later that evening (6:30pm + time zone) from Honolulu to Kona. Southwest calls it a duplicate \ double booking and refuse to sell me the ticket because of their policy. Apparently, they have a policy against 2 flights in one day and they say that it is their system that does this and humans cannot override. I thought computers only did what humans program them to do??? Anyway, Basically Southwest WILL NOT ALLOW you to fly on their planes twice in a day with separate reservations. Denial of service for ZERO reason and it cost them this (now former) loyal customer - which they apparently don't care about. THANKS FOR RUINING MY TRAVEL PLANS SOUTWEST!!!

 

Thanks for Reading


 

You were given bad information. I suggest you call back and ask for a supervisor. Or better yet, reach out to Customer Relations via chat in the Southwest app or Twitter.

 

Southwest's system does automatically cancel any flights that overlap. Basically any double bookings where one of the flights would be impossible to take. Unfortunately, Southwest isn't known for having the best IT, and this is an example of that. You've been caught by that system even though it should not apply to your situation. 

 

When this happens, reps can rebook the erroneously cancelled flight, and manually note the circumstances for future reference. Unfortunately, it is true that they have no way of making sure the system doesn't cancel your flight again (bad IT strikes again), so you may need to contact them again should that happen. Yes, this is a hassle. But if flying on Southwest is important to you it's the only way. 

 

I don't recommend adding EarlyBird Check-in to these flights since it will be cancelled each time your flight is, and you'll lose your EBCI purchase position.

 

Ultimately, the situation isn't quite as bad as you think, but arguably isn't great either. Good luck.

Re: Southwest Won't let you travel twice in a day - Ruined Travel Plans

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

Southwest believed that you couldn't actually fly the second flight given that they believed you would be in San Francisco still and canceled the second flight as is their stated policy. Others have reported calling and having success getting the cancelled flights reinstated, you too should have had success with that. Alternatively, it is still possible to purchase a flight for today from HNL to KOA for $39 so even if reinstatement didn't happen a replacement ticket could easily be purchased at a good price, using the refund given to you for the cancelation of the original flight. I fail to see how travel plans were "ruined". Perhaps Southwest caused a little unnecessary panic, but nothing that could not easily and quickly be resolved.

 

--TheMiddleSeat