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Comment by amorphid | Hacker News Reader

Southwest flights aren't that cheap unless you book in advance. And they used to (still might?) have a very flexible refund policy. You could not show up for a flight, never call, and still get a full credit for the value of your ticket to any other Southwest flight in the next 12 months w/ no penalty. I really like Southwest.

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They've restricted it slightly: now you have to notify them at least 10 minutes before the flight. But still no penalties - I really hope they don't have to do away with that policy since that's the main thing I like about Southwest.

The 10 minutes prior departure cancellation rule is for full refund to the original payment method, i.e. refund to credit card or cash. If you missed the flight without cancellation, you got back SW credit as refund, which has to be used within a year.

For the lowest-price ticket, "Super Web Saver" or whatever, there is no way to get a cash refund for a cancelled flight 24 hours after purchase. You just get the credit for cancelling 10 minutes before departure.

After that, you get nothing. It's in the contract. I think it's only been that way for 2 years or so.

That's still better than most other airlines. I'll definitely be considering SW from now on. I'm assuming they only do domestic flights?

They recently added quite a few international flights [1]. They now offer service to Aruba, Belize, Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos, Cancun, Cuba (not sure if it has started yet), Grand Cayman Island, Liberia, Costa Rica, Mexico City, Montego Bay, Nassau, Puerto Vallarta, Punta Cana, San Jose, and Costa Rica.

[1] https://www.southwest.com/international/

They're mostly domestic US with a small offering of routes to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Lat Am.

If you miss a flight they cancel the whole thing, including the return flight. Bastards.

Every single airline does this. In part, because people would often book returns because they were cheaper than one-ways.

The majority of seats sold in Europe are now one-way / singles, due to the rise of low-cost carriers which don't offer anything else.

However it's still a good idea to book each individual flight in a different transaction. Avoids any shennanigans on the airline's part for no-shows and there's no downside for the passenger other than a slightly longer booking process.

That's still flexible enough for my needs. Thanks for the info.

Yeah, they're super flexible, Southwest is pretty amazing.

I've never used them and admittedly don't know much about their model (the only time I fly US carriers is when I'm crossing the pond from Europe).

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