Skip to main content

Southwest Airlines Community

expired residual travel fund

south123
Explorer C

I had to cancel our family trip jul'18 due to reasons that was out of my hand. we had five tickets and south west issued residual travel fund of $98.98 for a total of $494.90. but i didn't know until yesterday that those funds expired on feb'19 . I thought that funds expire on the date of travel and didn't know until now it expires on the booking date.

 

In some discussion forums, i saw post that southwest will give a voucher back after deducting some fee but when I called today I was told that nothing can be done as the travel fund expired and the ticket was less than $100 per person even though the total amount was about $494.90

 

Has anyone faced similar scenario? 

4 REPLIES 4

Re: expired residual travel fund

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A
Solution

As you learned the hard way, Southwest will reinstate expired travel funds in the form of a voucher, BUT there is typically a $100 fee per travel fund. When multiple travel funds are in one person's name you can combine them before they expire by using them to book a flight and then cancel that reservation, but there's nothing you could have done to combine funds with different names and reduce the total amount of fees charged to reinstate the expired travel funds.

 

And yes, travel funds expire one year after the original flight purchase date and all travel must be completed before expiration.

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: expired residual travel fund

south123
Explorer C

Thanks for your response. I am okay to lose $100 fee as still $390 is better than $490. But I was told that they will not issue an voucher as the travel funds expired. 

Re: expired residual travel fund

SWDigits
Aviator A
You had it correct in your original post, the travel funds are for each traveler so that's why the math doesn't work work as shown in your second post. Combining them only works when they are all for the same traveler.

Customer | Home airport DCA

Re: expired residual travel fund

chgoflyer
Aviator A

On a multi-passenger travel fund the fee is $100 per person.