SW flight changes??

[princessjojo]

I can not count the number of times I have flown, but never on SW. That is about to change however. We are in the beginning of planning our trip for next June and I was just looking around at the different airline rates at this time to get an idea of how the rates should be vs. what they may be when we decide to book. I have heard nothing but positive things mainly about SW, especially their rates. But I have heard nothing really about how frequently they may change your flight times. Does this happen too much or no? We changed our vacation dates to add a day to the end last year because Delta changed our return flight so many times we were finally leaving 6 hours prior to that of what we had originally booked.

So what are other's experiences on this. Is it something I should concern myself over? We generally plan to take the first flight in and the last flight out.

Thanks for any info y'all are able to give me.

[RockChalkKimball]

I have flown on SW several times and have never had them change flight times. Once, we were late leaving the gate by about 15 minutes, but that has been the only glitch I have ever had flying SW. I have used other airlines and have had issues with the flight times being changed. That is why I always fly SW if they are going where I need to go.

[BrerStitch]

The DH and I fly SW almost exclusively, for Disney or otherwise. Usually that is just due to pricing. We have NEVER had SW change our flight time, and we've flown them for numerous things for 5 years now.

If anything, it's that your flight doesn't always tend to leave at its scheduled time, but a little bit later. I would say go for it, especially if the price is right.

[MinnieMommie]

I have a reasonable amount of SW travel experience and have never had the type of difficulty you mention. The only trouble I've had of this type has been with Delta. SW gets better all the time. When the rates are low I go for it! :mickey:

[kakn7294]

Once SW posts their flight times, they almost never change - I can honestly say in the past 2 years of watching flights from Pittsburgh to Orlando, I've never seen a flight changed or cancelled during my vacation time periods. They generally only cancel if the weather is bad. They will even fly with less than a dozen passengers since the planes usually are required to be in another location for another flight and would be going up anyway.

[Here we go again...]

SW has only changed flights on us when there were weather delays with flights coming in. If the plane you were planning to take is delayed too long, they bring in more planes! What a great idea... Other airlines should learn from them.

Once we were flying back to New Orleans with a connecting flight in Houston. The plane coming in was delayed due to weather. When it got there they made the announcement that they were going to do a "touch down" in New Orleans to let us off since we had been delayed and were going to miss our connecting flight in Houston. Gotta love Southwest!

[BigRedDad]

The way to look at SW is that it is a regional airline. They have daily schedules for all airports. For me, they leave and arrive at RDU to MCO on the same schedule every day. Yes, the times of the flights may change to delays, but the route continues.

[princessjojo]

Thanks for all of this helpful info. We too will be flying our of RDU and looking at the historical flight times, they are exactly what we are looking for.

Now the hard part is waiting for them to opem booking that far out. I still have a long while to wait....