Starting May 28 of this year, Southwest will be making some major changes to the things we’ve known and loved. For example Most people will be losing free checked bags on Southwest starting May 28 of this year, they’ll be introducing basic economy, flight credits will now expire (after 6-12 months depending on what type of fare you bought) and the value of points will become much more variable.
Coffee Break: Southwest takes the luv out of flying
Watch here…
Or listen here…
(01:39) – Commenter Brad says: “I’m an accountant who completely understands the math of cutting expenses or raising revenues to increase profit… I don’t understand, though, what the business strategy is here. Building a strategy that revolves around hoping customers won’t notice you’re charging them more for a worse product doesn’t seem like the kind of pitch that would get you an A in an MBA strategy class.”
Read the original post where this comment appeared here.
(03:28) – 2 Bags No longer Fly Free for Most (pricing not yet disclosed)
(05:48) – Basic economy fares
(06:23) – Flight credits will expire (From May 28, 2025)
(08:19) – Variable redemption rates
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Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads
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Is the current never expire $ we have in our accounts going to change on May 28 or is that just going to be “new” booked flights after May 28?
Just new bookings as of May 28th. Existing credit won’t expire — until you use it to book something after May 28th. Then, if you cancel that ticket that you purchased after May 28th, it’ll expire accordingly.
I don’t understand the variable redemption rate… Hasn’t it always been variable? Higher priced ticket means more points to redeem? What am I missing here?
Southwest points prices have always been dynamic but the redemption rates are consistently around 1.4 cents per point. With Variable Redemption, you may get 2.0 cents per point taking the 5:30 AM flight on a Tuesday, or maybe 0.5 cents per point if you want to fly home the day before Thanksgiving.
So they arbitrarily decide that a $300 flight might cost 25,000 points because it’s the day before Thanksgiving and a different $300 in mid Oct might only be 18,000 points? So the points wouldn’t have any relationship to the actual cost of the flight? Geez. they are going downhill even faster than I thought.
Correct. They haven’t been specific, but that’s exactly the impression they’ve given and they certainly haven’t taken any steps to correct that interpretation.
It seems like airlines are no longer striving to be the best.Future success seems to hinge on simply not being the worst…unless you’re a Bonvoy fan, I guess.
I posted without pausing to think, and I can’t seem to remove my comment with an edit. Sorry for the negativity.