Skip to main content

Southwest Airlines Community

Change in Rebooking process

thorny
Explorer A

Hi all; 

 

I find this community to be a wealth of information so thank you to all that help the rest of us. 

 

It seems the rebooking process and issuance of travel funds is different today than yesterday.  Yesterday I was able to rebook flights to different dates and as a result saving money from original purchase price.  I received travel funds.  Today, I attempted to modify a booking for next week and was NOT presented with an option to save money - only to select available flights thus NOT receiving travel funds for the difference in price.   So, there appears to be changes afoot.  I was also presented with an agreement selection that I had to select the same departure and arrival airports (which of course I intended to).  

 

So, it appears that due to the much lower rates being offered now SWA is losing even more money and changing their policies to be more restrictive.  I weighed the pros and cons and ended up cancelling the original (losing Early bird money) and rebooking.  Yes, now I have even more travel funds to somehow use but so be it. 

3 REPLIES 3

Re: Change in Rebooking process

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

Is this the prompt you saw?

SWchange.PNG

 

 

Because of schedule adjustments currently underway, similar to what has been happening when the schedule is revised to remove the Max aircraft, people with existing trips are offered the option to switch to any flight with the same/nearby city pairs.  Having this option available does seem to prevent someone from repricing their flight to a lower fare (as you saw).

 

As you did, you could cancel the flight, take the credit, then rebook the flight at the lower price leaving you with the credit you were initially looking for.  Alternatively, if you have EarlyBird and don't want to cancel because you lose EarlyBird (as you did) you could violate the "rules" of the free change and change your flight to a flight with a different city pair that does not qualify for a free change, then change it back to the actual flight you want to take.  EarlyBird would remain on the reservation and you would receive credit for the price difference as you were originally trying to do.

 

Sounds like you jumped the gun and already made the change, wish I could have helped you out beforehand so you wouldn't have lost EarlyBird.

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: Change in Rebooking process

thorny
Explorer A

No it was not.  The message and rebooking process is now being touted as being able to rebook with no additional fare. Well that's great except when the rebooked fare is much less. 

Re: Change in Rebooking process

bec102896
Aviator A
Solution

I just changed a flight and it gave me the difference in fare credit. the only difference right now that I notice is if your flight is in April or May you will get the message provided above by the middleseat you would click the flight you want it would show the word available (no price will be shown) once you click continue after selecting the flight you want you should then either see a credit if the price is cheaper or a $0 balance since the difference in fare is waived.