Friday, February 13, 2009

LUV is All You Need

They’re not the most glamorous of carriers. In fact, Southwest Airlines, with its folksy flight attendants, orange airplanes, and cutsey stock-ticker symbol (LUV), has probably done more than any other legacy operation to destroy the mystique of air travel.

But LUV is there for you. When something comes up unexpectedly as it did for me this weekend (and is it just me, or is this year already off-the-charts bizarro?), Southwest does make it incredibly easy to change your plans. I just had to bump up a flight for this coming Saturday by a couple of hours. I assumed that I would have to pay the difference between the price of my original flight and the two-day advanced purchace price of the new flight. Since I had to rebook for both Pipi and myself, I thought it might be expensive.

Turns out, there’s a sale going on and the new flight was about half the price of the old one. No, Southwest isn’t going to pay me, but they are letting me change my itinerary absolutely free. That’s a rare thing in these days of baggage fees and peanut surcharges.

It’s official: For flights under 2,000 miles, I LUV Southwest.

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