SOUTHWEST

Black and white cartoon of an annoyed traveler with a rolling suitcase glaring at an airline agent behind a check-in counter.

You’re mad at the wrong machine

by

Does the TSA want to measure your luggage? You might think so after a viral aviation report warned that the agency’s newer 3D scanners have smaller entry tunnels than the old X-ray machines, and that an oversized carry-on might not fit, potentially sending you back to the counter to check it. Travelers connected the dots fast: the government as the airlines’ baggage enforcer, turning every overpacked bag into a checked-bag fee. It is a textbook case of decoy outrage, a fake scandal that soaks up all the anger a real one deserves. The tunnels are indeed smaller, and the TSA advises asking a screener for help. But there is no algorithm flagging a bag an inch too wide, and no documented wave of passengers being marched back to pay up. If your bag fits and passes screening, it flies. The scanner panic is a non-story. The question it accidentally raises, about a government that already helps airlines keep the true cost of flying out of the advertised price, is not.

Minimal black and white line cartoon of a wide-eyed traveler holding a rolling suitcase at an airport counter while an agent behind the desk gestures, suggesting a conversation about baggage.

The war is over. Let’s bring airline baggage fees down now.

by

Peace negotiators may be dotting the i’s on a deal to end the Iran war, but air travelers are paying attention to something else: the cost of their checked bags. Remember when jet fuel prices spiked after the fighting broke out earlier this year? Every major American airline rushed to raise its checked bag fees. United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, they all went up. The airlines blamed the war, and at the time they had a point, since fuel had roughly doubled. But then the ceasefire came, oil pulled back from its highs, and guess what? Not one airline has announced it is bringing its luggage fees back down. There is a name for this pattern, and once you see how it works, and what Europe just did about bags while U.S. carriers went the other way, the summer ahead at the airport starts to look very different.

A Southwest Chase Visa credit offer that she never received.

Lured by a $200 Southwest Chase Visa credit. So where is it?

by

The Southwest Chase Visa credit offer Valerie Schreck saw looked too good to be true, as affinity credit card offers often do.

Apply for the card now, the pop-up on Southwest.com promised her, and she could save $200 on her flight.

She applied for the card, only to discover the offer was too good to be true. The $200 credit never showed up.

Southwest’s Laraba says booking glitch “neither the experience nor the impression we hope to leave with our customers”

by

At this hour, the likely culprit in this weekend’s Southwest Airlines fare-sale drama is a faulty database, which triggered an excess of 10,000 double-bookings. You’ve read the horror stories. I asked Teresa Laraba, the airline’s senior vice president for customers, to explain what went wrong and what customers should do if they’re affected.