Southwest offering reimbursement for “reasonable” expenses

17

a screenshot of a cell phone

Southwest Airlines has been absolutely melting down over the past week. While a winter storm began the downward spiral, but the implosion that ensued seems to have come from within (I’m not sure that we have the full picture yet as to what happened, but it seems that the collapse came on the operations side, whether staffing issues or scheduling issues due to a software collapse), leading to nearly all Southwest flights being cancelled or delayed (with as many as 70% of flights cancelled one day and around 90% of flights cancelled or delayed for days). This has obviously disrupted travel plans significantly (including my own). Southwest is now proactively offering reimbursement for “reasonable” expenses incurred due to the disruption. Your guess is as good as mine as to what will be considered reasonable, but it’s worth keeping receipts.

an airplane wing with a city and water below
Count yourself lucky if you’ve seen the view from a Southwest Airlines wing this week.

Customers that have been impacted by Southwest cancellations can go to https://www.southwest.com/traveldisruption/ to look at options for rebooking or requesting a refund. Anyone who has been in the thick of it this week knows that rebooking hasn’t been a realistic option unless you’re willing to travel in January (and while Southwest is allowing a free change within 30 days to those affected, that is valid only between the original city pairs). If you made alternate holiday plans already, you’ll probably prefer a refund over rescheduling your trip for sometime in January.

Be warned that the rebooking process appears to be somewhat of a mess, with Southwest noting in its Frequently Asked Questions that website functionality may be affected. In my case, I don’t think I could rebook online if I wanted to. My family was scheduled to fly on Christmas Eve. After I loaded up our van (in -24 degree wind chill – fun times!) and we started up the road for the 1hr+ drive to the airport, I just happened to pull up the Southwest app to check something unrelated and I saw that our flight was cancelled. We did not receive a text or email about the cancellation from Southwest until after the fact. It was lucky that I pulled up the app as we pulled out of town.

The website was confusing, making it sound like our flight was already rebooked and we should review it and change if need be, but the itinerary itself hadn’t changed. However, we couldn’t change it online. My wife has a Companion Pass and I was flying as her companion, so I couldn’t change my flight without her and she couldn’t change her flight without cancelling mine. I didn’t want to proactively cancel my reservation (in the moment, I didn’t know what we were going to do in terms of rebooking and I didn’t want to take myself off the list of passengers that needed to be reaccommodated if we were going to fly on a different Southwest flight). I tried calling Southwest and waited on hold for more than 2 hours before the system disconnected my call.

a screenshot of a phone
They eventually hung up on me. Call centers have been overwhelmed all week.

In my case, the situation wasn’t that big of a deal. We had to scramble to get ready to celebrate Christmas at home, but we did that and then decided to drive the ~14hrs to visit family, leaving home on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Our situation was far less inconvenient than what others have faced.

a group of people in a car
~14hrs in the car was inconvenient, but the kids managed better than expected. The minivan with TV screens turned out to have been the right decision.

I had booked our flights using Southwest points and the Chase Sapphire Reserve, so we would ordinarily qualify for trip delay / cancellation coverage, but since we were at our home airport and we didn’t have any nonrefundable bookings associated with the trip, we didn’t face any costs that would qualify for reimbursement from Chase.

However, it seems that Southwest is offering reimbursement for expenses related to the meltdown. From their FAQs:

I’ve incurred additional expenses (e.g., hotel, other airline tickets, rental car, food, etc.). Can I receive a reimbursement?

If you have been impacted by a flight cancellation or significant flight delay between December 24, 2022, and January 2, 2023, you may submit receipts for consideration via Email Us on Southwest.com. We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation.

It is very unclear as to what expenses they will reimburse and what they consider “reasonable”. While the wording suggests a cash reimbursement, I wouldn’t be surprised if they offer Southwest vouchers.

Let’s be clear: this meltdown sounds like it was largely Southwest’s fault (the storm obviously wasn’t, but everyone else was back to business as usual within a day or two and Southwest continued to cancel or delay around 90% of its flights for days afterward). I think that reimbursements here is the “right thing to do” and Southwest may well face government-mandated accountability eventually. But the fact is that based on current rules, they aren’t yet mandated to do much.  The fact that they are creating a mechanism to try to do right by customers is a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, we don’t yet know how big that step will be. My flight to visit family was cancelled, so we drove ~14 hours. Based on the FAQs, I would expect that we should qualify for reimbursement of gas and food for the road trip (lucky for Southwest, nothing along the highway was open for dinner on Christmas night, so they’re only on the hook for some instant mac and cheese at the Pilot travel center that night lol).

a woman and two children standing in front of a coffee machine
Christmas dinner came via the microwave at a Pilot Travel Center.
a man smiling at camera
The Pilot did have a festive atmosphere though!

If we had rented a car, I suppose we could have asked for reimbursement of that cost (we drove our own car). Will they cover the cost of the hotel we booked on the way down since we couldn’t make the entire drive in a day? I will certainly submit the receipt and request it, but I don’t know. What about the return journey? Our return flight isn’t yet cancelled, but we obviously won’t take it since we need to drive our car home.

a building with a sign on it
You know you’re a blogger when you check into a SpringHill suites at 10:30pm and your four year old, who has been complaining that he’s tired and wants to go to a hotel for the last hour, stops as soon as he walks into the room and says “Daddy, would you like to take pictures of everything?”. Nope, one of the outside will do.

What about someone who booked an alternative flight on another carrier? Based on the FAQs, I would think that they could be reimbursed, but is there a limit? I saw someone post a screen shot on Twitter of a Southwest flight to Denver that was available for sale for $1800 asking whether that would be considered “reasonable”. We don’t have any idea what will be deemed reasonable here — at this point, Southwest is just saying that you can submit your requests for “consideration” — it doesn’t commit to reimbursement but rather commits to consider it and grant reimbursement if they deem it reasonable. The moral of the story there is don’t book something super-expensive if you can’t live with not being reimbursed. We just don’t know what Southwest will reimburse and I can’t imagine how long it is going to take for them to weed through the backlog of reimbursement requests.

In my case, if they cancel my flight home, perhaps I can get some cancellation coverage from Chase (since we paid the taxes for the award flights home using a Chase card). However, Chase won’t cover alternate transportation, so I don’t expect they will be willing to cover gas and hotel for the ride home since Southwest is offering to rebook for free. At the end of the day, we’ll just spend what we ordinarily would and see what coverage / reimbursements come through. That said, based on the phone notification I got a few minutes ago, it looks like there may be a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of flights getting back on track.

a screenshot of a phone

Bottom line

If you have been affected by the meltdown, I think it’s absolutely worth submitting receipts for any unexpected expenses you’ve incurred due to Southwest cancellations. I imagine some readers may have been on the hook for significant nonrefundable hotel costs and/or you may have needed to book last-minute fares on other airlines whether to get to family domestically or to position for an award flight somewhere else. It sounds like Southwest may reimburse people to some extent, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so you’ll need to squeak. Just expect to be in a holding patter for what will likely be weeks if not months before reimbursements (if any) start rolling in.

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[…] stipulate part of the company’s response to the situation. Southwest issued a statement that it would cover “reasonable” expenditures for stranded passengers but that process is […]

FC Charles

Read the fine print and air traveler passenger bill of rights. Also take a look at most premium credit card benefits. You’ll find that what you are covered exceed what Southwest will explicitly communicate to the public.

Rosetta Townsend

I booked South West one way,and then booked spirit one way back.Southwest reimbursed, Spirit airline didn’t,they gave me a credit of 253.00,I lost 290.00 because I had to cancel my trip with south west.i was so disappointed with Spirit airline.plus I have 90 days to use my credit of 253.00 with Spirit Airline,and this is 3 passenger s

cookie yeager

We are sorry all this happened but we love southwest and we know you will come through see ya on our next flight ok ❤something good will come of this ✈CY

John Burkholder

Sorry but this crap airline deserves to be forced out of business and shut down for good but you go right ahead and book again with them

Elena

We were impacted too, 1 extra night in Liberia Costa Rica, and 3 nights in Denver (which was supposed to be a connecting city home). We didn’t realize the extent of the Southwest meltdown until our Monday 12/26 flight was canceled again and that’s when I used points to book United home Wednesday 12/28 (none available by then on points for 12/27 and would have cost over $1K per person ticket). Luckily Denver has many Hyatt options so I can book on points.

P.S. So cute your son asked if you needed to take pictures!! I was so exhausted looking up flights and trying to rebook, I didn’t video much the madness happening at Denver airport.

Kelly Paulsen

My father (84) had his flight scheduled from Oakland to San Diego cancelled as he was approaching the airport on in the morning of 12/23. At that time the website simply said “unavailable” for flights that day,12/24 & 12/25. It was Christmas Day when we noticed they had rebooked him on a flight from Oakland for 5:50pm that night. If he had counted on that flight he would have missed all of the Christmas festivities he was flying to join. I’m not sure why Southwest did not include 12/23 in their expenses reimbursement offer, their cancellation frenzy began that day and impacted many, including our family. My sister drove my father to Los Angeles that day, traffic was horrible, their trip took twice as long as usual. He stayed a night in a hotel and then took Amtrak 12/24 to Santa Ana where we picked him up. Amtrak is having work done on tracks from Orange County to San Diego, the last leg of the journey is by bus. He walks with assistance therefore we opted to skip the bus. The drive home 12/26, (still no SW flights available) took 14 hours, again twice as long, we assume other travelers took to the roads due to their flight cancellations as well.

ZCH

I would submit mileage for reimbursement at the IRS rate. Why let them off the hook for wear and tear on your car?

PhilC_ROC

I submitted the same for the rescue round trip drive from STL-MDW to rescue my stranded mother-in-law.

NixBlitz

Did they pay it?

Roy

Second leg of itinerary was cancelled on 12/25. Booked flight on different airline, leaving from a different airport since no flights were available for days. I submitted an expense reimbursement request for a hotel booked with points near new departing airport, valuing the points at $.01. Also added lodging cost of missing one day at destination. All other expenses (Uber, airfare, dinner) were out of pocket. I think all submitted expenses were reasonable. Luckily we only missed one day of our vacation.

patrick

And on a slightly relate note… I’m trying to requalify for A-list and the flight that was to have been my 25th was cancelled and I had to rebook on another airline. Now I’m one flight short at no fault of my own.
What do you think? Will the give me a courtesy credit?

Michael

Like many of us, I was in a similar situation, but booked an alternate flight on AA with miles when Southwest couldn’t rebook me for days. Any suggestions on how to submit that “alternate transportation” for reimbursement? Worth asking if Southwest would credit the equivalent amount of miles that I used for the AA flight? Appreciate the perspective!

Johnny

I did the same, for three people. Wondering how to submit for AA miles?

loungeabuser

South worst is gonna buy u AA miles: suppose now you don’t have enuf aa miles for that first class int’l redemption and you have to pay $11650 for the one way to Sydney… i hope we end up with a reg similar to EU.

Cavedweller

AOC said take the train..ALOHA