If you’ve received notification of a schedule change from Southwest for any of your upcoming flights, check your new itinerary very carefully because they might’ve made some ridiculous changes to your flights which could include simply dropping a leg of your itinerary even though the email from them suggests you’re still booked on that flight.
This is something that Nick noticed after receiving notification of an upcoming flight change. Here’s an example of an email he received from Southwest:
Here’s Nick’s account of what he found next:
The only change on that appears to be the flight number on the MDW-SEA flight and the arrival time (they pushed that back by 10min). I got that email on 7/22.
Last night I was logged in and looking at fall trips to make some changes and I noticed that the trip above now shows it is from Chicago(MDW) to Seattle. When I click the flight info, it only has the flight from Chicago to Seattle. It no longer originates in Albany – that leg is just gone.
I wondered if I had messed up and not booked it from home, but then I found the only schedule change email I’ve gotten is the one above that shows it departing Albany at 6:50pm.
So I went to Southwest.com and determined that what’s happened is that they have cancelled the Albany to Chicago(MDW) flight on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so if I wanted to book a flight from Albany to Seattle that day, the only option now is leaving ALB at 6:30am and connecting to something that ends up in Seattle around noon.
So the crazy thing here is that rather than rebook us on the only option they are selling that date (the 6:30am departure), they just cancelled our Albany to Chicago leg without telling us as though departing from Chicago is the same as departing from Albany lol. If I hadn’t been in the account to look at other stuff, we’d have gone to check in 24hrs in advance and realized that we had no way to get to Chicago — they literally haven’t emailed to let us know that we don’t have a way to get to Chicago to connect.
While this might sound like an isolated glitch, it’s not. A similar thing has happened to some of his family members:
My sister-in-law and her husband were on the same schedule (we’re attending a family wedding) and when I just called her about it she argued with me that they got a schedule change but it was still leaving Albany at 6pm. I explained to her that we got the same email but when you pull it up on Southwest.com the Albany leg is gone. Despite me explaining that, she pulled up her email on video chat to show me that no, their flight is scheduled to leave Albany at 6:50pm, at which point I had to tell her again to go to Southwest.com and pull it up at which point she finally listened and said, “Oh. Yeah, it says departing Chicago. Wow. How would I have known that?”.
Perhaps this is just a glitch on this specific route on this specific date.
Except it’s not.
When checking some of his other reservations, Nick found similar anomalies:
It gets crazier yet. I just got looking at other stuff later that I wouldn’t have even looked at yet otherwise. We had booked flights to Myrtle Beach in a few months to be there for my dad’s birthday. Here’s the schedule change email:
But when I pull it up in my account for the departing flight, it now shows up as a trip just to Baltimore.
That’s not all though – it gets worse:
Same thing on the flight home — they just cut off the Myrtle Beach leg. Crazier yet, they didn’t actually drop a flight from the schedule in this situation. Our original schedule was ALB at 11:45am arriving at 3:45pm in MYR. They rebooked us on the 10:30am from Albany I guess but didn’t put us on the flight to Myrtle Beach that arrives at 4:20pm?? That would have been a 45 min change on arrival — less of a difference than the departure flight (which is now 55min earlier).
The fact that this has happened to Nick on multiple itineraries and Southwest has dropped the first leg in some cases and the second leg in others is extremely concerning, especially seeing as the confirmation emails make it seem like nothing untoward has happened beyond a minor schedule change.
If you have any upcoming reservations with Southwest, it’d therefore be worth checking your itineraries on their website rather than relying on their emails for accurate information, particularly if your flights aren’t nonstop.
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Yeah same thing on a couple of my flights a while back. Changing is one thing but just cutting out half the route…dang
I’ve cancelled about half of my flights altogether with Southwest this year due to stuff like this. Don’t get me wrong, I still like SWA and have both A-list and the Companion Pass, but they’ve done some really stupid stuff with our flights. For example with two upcoming trips, our LAX-TUL was changed from about six hours to a crazy itinerary going from LAX-MSY-HOU-TUL that would have doubled our flying time. Who wants to spend a complete day getting from LA to Tulsa, not even factoring in airport times to check in? Then, just last week, they took my companion for a flight from HNL-LAX and booked just her from HNL-LAS-LAX. I would have been on a direct and she would have added another three to four hours, plus different origin times for takeoff. Crazy…..
Hawaiian cancelled one of our flights and never informed us. I wouldn’t have known except I went to change the dates and had no flights. They also didn’t return my miles until I called CS. Checked all my emails and spam and never found any notice of cancellations. Pretty crappy.
Southwest also sent us an email that a flight was changed from 8am was cancelled and moved us to the 11pm because of equipment issues – even though the flight is 3 months away?!
Went back a week later to check all our SW flights to see if they were cheaper and they reinstated the 8am flight without telling us so moved our flight back to the much more convenient 8am.
Have to be super diligent in checking all flights nowadays.
I just happened to look at my flight changes for what were originally direct flights between DEN-SAN, that they turned into DEN-AUS-SAN and SAN-LAS-COS-DEN! Glad I looked bc these were totally jacked up and this is while there are at least half a dozen non-stops daily.
Same thing! They dropped the second leg of my flight and left me stranded.
My upcoming fall Southwest non-stops have also all had schedule changes with new departure times like an hour or more later.
I just had an automatic change with AA today when they cancelled my IAH-DFW flight about 5-6 hours before departure. They auto-rebooked me 5 hours before departure onto a flight with about the same departure time but HOU-DFW instead. Thankfully they did a full refund as the airport change didn’t work for us but they made no attempt to highlight the airport change. :-/
I have had several changes to flights this fall, but none dropped a leg. However, it says to contact them to change the flight for no charge. Does anyone know if there is rules to what you can do? One flight is to Miami, but that trip may need to be canceled and I was going to book something to CUN. If I do find out in the next week or so that Miami will be canceled can I call and just have them move this to CUN instead at no charge or additional points???
They will tell you which airports are acceptable alternatives, can’t just rebook to anywhere u want. For Mia it’ll probably be tampa or orlando
We were on Southwest last weekend – Pensacola FL to Las Vegas was actually Pensacola to Denver; Denver to BOZEMAN MT; Bozeman to Vegas – originally it said stops no plane changes – when we got to Denver, there were only 5 of us going on through to Bozeman, so they kicked us off our perfectly good aircraft and put us on a super crowded older aircraft that was totally full – then when we got to Bozeman, two of the passengers that were supposed to be going through to Vegas got off the plane and disappeared! We spent a good 45 minutes at the gate before they finally decided they weren’t coming back
Nearly every airline is doing nonsense like this – has happened to me with American Airlines AND Alaska Airlines. I bloody login every few days to check what they are doing with my booked flights and *now* I have booked backup flights with alternate airlines just in case. Crazy.
Wiseman I booked 2 trips for 9/1 like a year ago .I canceled Greece(Delta) and have HNL left . I had a medical Direct flt, last week a little trouble . I canceled 4 last year 1 this year..
I usually only fly direct is there trouble with that ????
Thanks
The same craziness has just recently happened to us. Flight changed to arrive in Houston at 4:45pm but the connecting departing flight leaves at 3:15pm ( you must pay close attention to the changes we almost missed this). We have book this leg through a different airline and pay more money. It’s ridiculous!
Makes it hard to make car rental reservation times.
Thanks Stephen. Will check
I am SWA A Llist. Had flight to RNO from CMH thru DEN. SWA changed 1st leg to arr 1+ hr after 2nd leg departs. Lucky I checked and changed ok. But no email to me.
These kind of “errors” will have pax moving to different carriers in the long run and hurt SWA badly. Many pax on PHX 2 days ago very upset over changes and also over (my guess) over 50% with serious over 1 hr. delays.
And worse. Seems no ones knows why nor let pax know what to do.
Maybe somebody should @ southwest’s CEO, these are not little problems. I know I will be looking much harder at other options for my holiday travel
Another one here where a leg was cancelled but was not notified. I’ve never had a problem with Southwest before. Had to call, on hold 20 minutes, to get it straightened out. Luckily got on a different flight that reduced layover time so it actually worked out better.
Asked rep why I was notified of a change but not notified one leg was cancelled. Couldn’t answer. Said to make sure you always check the website.
SW is not the only one. Jetblue changed my flights. Me and my kids where changed from 7pm to 8:30am flights.. but my spouse got moved to the next day….and they also dont have me and my kids sitting together as it stands.
That is not the same thing. Jetblue actually CHANGED the flight time based on their cancellation. SW is telling people the changed to something that did not exist.