Southwest Airlines

Hi,

every so often I look at a current price for my booked flight with Southwest just to see if the prices went up or down.

Just now I also looked at Delta's price for the same cities, same dates and about the same time frame.

I am surprised that Delta was lower, (206) vs (264 - on Southwest). And Delta offers direct flight both ways at the low rate..

I am surprised that Delta was lower, (206) vs (264 - on Southwest). And Delta offers direct flight both ways at the low rate..

Shame on Delta. Don't they know Southwest is always supposed to be cheaper?! :D

The ground stop didn't last all day. I had several guests make it here from Chicago the past 3 days, including the day the building was damaged. Other airlines cancelled many flights, but WN cancelled all flights at once. Some of my guests had rather round-about re-routings (all the way to either coast and back to the middle), but they got out. Just saying' flights did move. Yes, I know WN doesn't work on a hub system…

They opened very limited service around 3:00 pm CST. They had no idea when it would reopen, early reports from the FAA was 24 hours.

You could also pay for EarlyBird Boarding $10 per segment which automatically checks you in and gets you into the A Boarding Group. Its totally worth it if you won't be near a computer and do not want to rely on someone else to do this for you.

 

I have used EarlyBird Checkin when I was away from any internet connection and it worked like a charm. I just went to the EarlyBird Checkin line at the airport printed my boarding pass and checked my bag.

EBCI on Southwest is for early check-in (Southwest checks you in 36 hours before your flight), not early boarding. It costs $12.50, not $10.00. Getting in the A boarding group is not guaranteed; it is not unusual to get B boarding when using this.

Actually the ground stop ended far earlier than 3pm CDT (also earlier than 3pm CST if that is the measuring stick you want to use for some reason). I had two friends who flew into ORD on Friday and arrived shortly after 1pm.

If you assume most people check one piece of luggage, Delta's $206 fare becomes $256 round trip vs. Southwest's $264. In this case, both airlines end up being about the same price. It always pays to check all options and to compare apples to apples, i.e. it very well may be a lower end cost on any given airline. We all know that no airline has a corner on "always being lowest cost" as much as people like to make snide remarks about it.

Air travel was still a mess late in the day on Friday. A friend who was flying in from China said that they had already taken off when the incident happened in Chicago. He said that once they got close to the US, they flew a really strange route, almost as if they were searching for an airport to land at. It was late enough, though, that Chicago's airspace had reopened and they were able to land there as expected. His connection, however, had not made it in. He ended up on Amtrak for the last leg of his journey, a number of hours later than expected.

Air travel was still a mess late in the day on Friday.

Actually air traffic was still a mess all weekend and even now is not back to normal. My comment referred to a specific sentence about a total ground stop, which was inaccurate.

Actually air traffic was still a mess all weekend and even now is not back to normal. My comment referred to a specific sentence about a total ground stop, which was inaccurate.

Sure!

This is why we always travel at least a day before, and have insurance. While it would be about a 20 hour drive to Port of Miami for us, if we needed to, we could drive it at the last minute.

I assume that insurance would also pay for something, whether to get us to meet the ship at the first port or something. Even on a closed loop cruise, where they don't normally let passengers join as the cruise goes on, I assume the rule would be waived if the people in question had the documentation needed to fly to where the ship was going to be.

Hmm mm, just one more reason I'm glad we travel with passports.