Do I cancel the flight?

[krisanne42]

Hello - my parents are supposed to fly out in 34 minutes...

My mom woke up sick and can not make the flight. I have been on hold with customer service for over 3 hours; have DMd on twitter and facebook; and obviously tried to make the changes myself on SW.com. I am logged in to their account, can access all information and get all the way to the point where you hit "confirm changes" and it gives me an error message. EVERY TIME. I have logged in and out, tried a variety of flights, etc. 

I am stuck on what to do next. I do not want them to lose out on their flight. I do not want to miss the 10 minute before takeoff deadline for changes...as of now they will just look like "no shows" - but believe me this is not the case. I have been trying everything all morning long. 

Any advice? Do I just cancel their flight? 

[dfwskier]

SInce my reply is more than 34 minutes after your post, I suspect that most things I say will not be of immediate value to you.

The bomb cyclone has destroyed airline schedules -- everyone's. When stuff like that happens tens of thousands of people call to make alternate arrangements - thus the phone lines get jammed for hours. SInce time was of the essence, I guess I would have tried the cell app chat function.

Yeah I would have cancelled the flight.

I am confused about one thing. You said your mom was sick and could not make the flight.

Then you said  "I do not want them   to lose out on their flight."  Did you dad decide to travel without your mom? If so, that means her ticket for sure should have been cancelled.

At this point the best you can do is e-mail the airline succinctly explain what you tried to do to avoid this situation and what the end result was from Southwest.

To do that, click on "contact us" below.

I hope you can get it straightened out.

[krisanne42]

Thank you so much for your response. I appreciate your help! I did end up cancelling the flight - with no other option at that point.

To address your confusion, I was interested in doing a CHANGE since the cancellation basically would mean that they would need to get in and rebook - costing over 600 per person for the one way ticket. The change option was telling me I could change the flight (to certain available options) for no additional fee. Since that continued to give me error messages, I was worried that cancelling would force them to go in and rebook a one way for 1000+. I was hoping to avoid that. 

Long story short, I cancelled and re-booked a new flight through Delta Airlines. They had non stop options. But at least they can get home! Thank you!