While I'm not a Southwest customer, there's no airline I have more respect for than them. They're just customer friendly. Justified or not, customers love Southwest. There's many things they do right, and then there's some things they get credit for that I just can't understand, like people uniformly claiming they have the lowest fares.…
Continue reading: A bizarre change at Southwest…
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Don't forget the recent change to their Contract of Carriage that lumps aircraft maintenance issues into the same delay/cancellation category as weather and acts of God.
@Lucky -- Very cheap of Southwest, especially since I actually bought some of their drink coupon books.
@Iceman -- OMG, are you serious? Wow, I will never fly Southwest again.
Here's the boarding area blog I read about the SWA change on: http://boardingarea.com/thewanderingaramean/2010/07/why-southwest-isnt-responsible-for-aircraft-maintenance/
@Iceman - Sounds like you need to get your info from a better source. WN never said aircraft mechanical issues, but media and bloggers like the link you point to, assumed that. So very quickly WN revised the language.
@Lucky - This change is in response to some states that have been sniffing around looking for ways to get additional revenue from non-traditional sources and fines. Remember the Frontier fight with NM back in 2007 over license requriements? Some states are now taking a stand saying drinks as a ticket perk are for day of only. Other states are saying unexpiring drink coupons could get a license revoked. So in order to stay consistant across the board WN is making these changes.
The Business Select rule makes sense to me as it's a perk tied to the fare that you are flying that day. Yes, it's a perk that you might not use at certain times, but it's not a drink coupon that you earn forever. It's designed so that you get a free drink on the flight that you paid the Business Select fare. I mean if you pay for a first class seat on a morning flight and you don't drink for whatever reason, you don't get free drinks on the next flight. I know there are other perks for first class that justify the fare difference, but the free drink isn't the only perk of Business Select either.