I Love Southwest Airlines

Or should I say LUV, which is their ticker symbol?

Southwest Airlines is the only airline I know that will not charge you a fee for changing or canceling a non-refundable ticket. Things come up all the time. You can’t make it to your brother’s place or you want to go on a different date. If you bought your ticket from any other airline, you will have to pay $50, or sometimes $100, to change your ticket. Not with Southwest. When you make a change, you get 100% credit for what you paid on your original ticket. If you have to cancel the trip altogether, you don’t get your money back but you’ll get a “store credit” valid for 12 months after the date you originally bought the ticket. And that credit isn’t tied down to your name either. You can let anybody in your family or even your friend use it. And you can break it apart and use it on multiple tickets if you have a large credit. That’s very fair.

This “no change fee” policy also allows you to take advantage of fare sales. If the fare comes down after you bought your ticket, you can just rebook the same flight at lower fare, pocketing a credit for the difference for future trips. Try doing that with any other airline and you will have to fork over $50-100 first which negates the fare difference.

What about the no-assigned seat boarding procedure everybody mentions whenever Southwest comes up in a conversation? No big deal. You get on, you get off and move on to your business. That’s the way an airline should be.

Go Southwest, go!