Southwest

I have always had a warm, fuzzy place in my heart for Southwest airlines. Their recent advertising campaign has been targeted toward their lone refusal among major carriers to charge fees for checked baggage. I thought this was a nice gesture, but I rarely fly with more than a stuffed carry-on. Today, I saw a new campaign that hit much closer to home, and likely cemented Southwest as my preferred carrier.


Last year I flew more miles than I had during the rest of my life combined. A 2500-mile long distance relationship will do that to you. On one memorable occasion, I had booked tickets a month and a half ahead of a  visit to NYC with my girlfriend, who would drive down from upstate NY to meet me. We would then drive back upstate and I would fly back to SoCal from there. A bit complicated but it worked.

About a week after booking the tickets, I received the happy news that I was invited to interview for admission to a medical school in Norfolk, VA. The day of the interview was just two days before I was traveling east anyways, so I began to investigate what it would take to change my tickets so as to add Norfolk as my first destination.


Problem 1: I used a travel site, specifically Orbitz.


Problem 2: I booked on multiple carriers.


Problem 3: I was planning to fly into and out of three under-served regional airports.


After researching the fees and charges associated with changing or canceling the tickets, I quickly determined that this was going to suck.  In order to change an itinerary through a site like Orbitz, the traveler is charged $150 per carrier (as would be the case if you booked through any one carrier) and an additional $50 for Orbitz. For my ordeal, the fees totaled $350 in additional cost on top of the cost of the new flights and any fare changes since my initial booking.


Three hours on the phone with five progressively more competent customer service representatives led to the same conclusion. Ordered from most to least expensive, these were my options:
     $$$. Modify my current itinerary to include my new destination.
       $$. Cancel my current ticket, and rebook an entirely new itinerary.
         $. Keep my old itinerary and buy a new ticket from Santa                          Barbara to Norfolk and back again.


Think about that. That means that due to fees for modifying tickets, it is cheaper to fly nine flights than six, and an additional 5000 miles. Something is broken with this system.


I think the most irritating part is that it takes one person literally five minutes to change a flight. Even taking into account the need for server maintenance and running costs, it cannot take hundreds of dollars to modify an itinerary. Even if it did, this would not offset the loss of potential profit from seats on the three unnecessary flights. Moreover, if this problem is widespread, it could lead to more flights being flown. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but this could actually lead to the airline making a profit on a net extra flight caused entirely by fees. Bah!

If you haven't figured it out already, the new ad campaign by Southwest is spotlighting that, much as with their stand on baggage fees, they stand alone among major carriers by not charging a fee for changing a flight. Score one for efficiency; score one for common sense.