Southwest Airlines Reviews 801

I bought a basic fare ticket for a short visit out of state. A couple of days into my trip my husband - still at home- had unexpected heart problems leading to his immediate hospitalization. Southwest changed my ticket free of the $70 up charge fee. Margarita, the agent, was so kind and professional. Southwest truly showed me they are an airline with heart. Thank you.

I didn't realize how poor Southwest airlines customer service was until I flew American and Alaska

The new system of seat assignments and charges for bags is awful. Now even sw is nickel and diming their customers in an outrageous way. Used to be an airline of service and caring about their customers. Now their worse.

I had to pay for a seat on my return flight from LI to Florida. The seat location was fine, but the new boarding process was confusing. As a long SW customer for over 15 years, you have DONE NOTHING for Formally loyal customers. I am not sure why you didn't leave the 2 free bags in place for long time RR customers and the new seating policy changes is another insult to us. GIVE US SOMETHING BACK TO KEEP US LOYAL,

I was hung up on 8x. Ima disabled 21 year veteran of the USMC and long time(EX) SWA customer. After the way i was treated tonight after tryin to make arrangements go see a dyin family member i will never ever use this airline again....

Worst as usual
Cancellation and delays are the norm for them.

NEVER AGAIN!!!!!! It’s been a minute since I flew with Southwest and now I remember why. Their layovers are atrocious!! Decided to give them another chance this time around and I knew it was going to come back and bite me in the butt. What was supposed to be a 3 hour trip where I was supposed to be home by 5 pm, has now turned into a nightmare and I won’t be home until after midnight. Customer service can’t do squat of course and so basically I am SOL. I mean what if we had to get home for something important for work? Or an emergency medical appointment?? They basically tell ya “oops sorry but you’re just going to have to deal with it.” Yeah…never again Southwest. Even if I have to pay $200 more for a flight, it will be worth it. Screw you Southwest!!!

Worst customer service ever. Unwilling to help and I’ve been hung up on at least 10 times. Do not fly southwest for any reason, you may regret it!

They bankrupted Greyhound with their low fares and inherited the riff-raff. Watching the quality of service decline and preferring to sit among more civil people, was rebooked by another airline on Southwest only to experience the most hostile, rude, insolent customer service personnel at Fort Lauderdale - behavior which I should have expected given the ferel passengers they cater too.

Southwest has gone from fun people and an unmatched safety record to child or otherwise unemployable crews and excuses. I have been flying Southwest for the past 26 years using my Chase Southwest card. Now looking at ANYONE else to fly.

Absolute ripoff even for using Southwest points or just purchasing flights. My wife and I may be looking into another airline after seeing how rediculus their flights were. 1200.00 for a flight to and from Witchita with layover and that is for choice plus standard seating sitting together. That is a rip off. We used to pay less flying with Southwest. Cheapest deal is the airline picks your seat which doesn’t guarantee you will sit together. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t give Southwest your business. Clear that they are just turning into a greedy company. I hope they lose a lot of business because of the rising unaffordable prices.

I rarely write negative reviews, but after my recent experience with Southwest Airlines, I feel obligated to share what happened so others can make informed decisions.

My family and I carefully planned our travel to ensure we had ample time to reach an extremely important commitment, something that was genuinely life-changing for us. We intentionally purchased tickets with sufficient buffer time because we understand that travel can sometimes be unpredictable. We did everything right on our end.

Unfortunately, our flight was delayed twice — first in Minneapolis and then again in Denver. What makes this even more frustrating is that these delays were not due to weather or mechanical issues. I confirmed that. They were the result of poor planning and coordination. Those are preventable operational failures.

To make matters worse, I was not even properly notified about the first delay. I only discovered it because I happened to check the flight status myself. There was no timely alert, no proactive communication, and the updates significantly lagged behind what was actually happening. When every minute matters, lack of communication adds unnecessary stress and confusion.

Because of these repeated delays, we missed something incredibly important, an opportunity that cannot simply be rescheduled. The impact on my family was significant. While I may be just one customer in a large system, the consequences of these disruptions were very real for us.

Airlines operate in complex environments, and delays can happen. But when disruptions are caused by internal planning issues rather than uncontrollable circumstances, accountability and communication become even more critical. Southwest needs to improve operational coordination, provide real-time notifications, offer realistic timelines, and empower frontline staff with better tools to assist affected passengers. When mistakes happen, proactive solutions and meaningful accountability go a long way toward restoring trust.

As for me and my family, we will not be flying Southwest again. Trust, once broken in a moment that matters most, is very difficult to rebuild.

I hope this experience serves as feedback for improvement, and as a caution for others planning important travel.

Booking portal is very poor. Customer service is terrible.

I have used Southwest travel for over a decade and the experience has always been good and on point. This last time using them, I booked a rental car and received a confirmation for $624 for two weeks in Costa Rica. When we arrived after flying Southwest, which was a nice non stop flight, we learned that a company named Eurocar had taken over Fox, our original booking car rental. They would not honor our confirmation of $624 and instead charged us over $1k!, which was NOT in our budget! What are you going to do about it Southwest?

The posted on-time performance has to be fake. 75%? No way. Maybe 50% is more likely.

Why buy a seat when my friend didn’t buy a seat and was seated ahead of me. Loading the plane was slow and confusing nobody knew what to do. What are the groups for? People are trying to get pass people. The groups are not people in the back loading first or vice versa. I liked the old Way better if you bought a better seat, you got to sit closer to the front which which that is what I expect now you’re like any other airlines and now I can fly any airline cause it’s all the same Southwest has raised their prices so high instead of me just flying south I will now check out other airlines cause Southwest is not special anymore.

Shittiest airline - next to all of the others.

As a long time southwest customer do not use southwest moving forward. As many know they changed to assigned seating just like every other airline. The first official day of assigned seating we flew with them. 48 hours prior to flight we are able to choose our seats since we both have Southwest credit cards. We chose our seats next to each other no problem. First flight we sit next to each other second flight our seats get separated right before the flight. Gate agent tells us nothing they can do since it’s a full flight. We board the plane multiple other families had the same issues a flight attendants tell us in the future to screen shot our flights so we have proof. I’m the end we do the flight separated again first day so some bugs are expected to be worked out. Now fat forward a week and again 48 hours prior to flight we book our seats since next to each other. This time we screen shot the proof. Night before the flight our seats get changed. My wife calls southwest they tell us only a gate agent can fix this. We tell them we have proof of the problem and the the week before flight agents tell us that’s it’s to late to fix our seats. In the end after talking to everyone possible no one will fix the issue. If you have a Southwest Airlines card you have no benefits. My advice would be to go with one of the 100s of other airlines that have been successful at assigned seats and not this joke of a airline company. Again I have used southwest for years and have loved using them for years they no longer care about their customers only how to make the most profit.

Just another airline....I have been an a-list or a-list preferred customer for over 15 years. Today, it was like flying SWA for the first time. Employees were trying but the new rules leaves SWA with no point of differiantation and a game that the are 2nd rate at best.

First, our flight was delayed multiple hours because of the wind. That was totally acceptable and reasonable. Then we finally got on the plane, and we were ready to depart, and the staff spent an hour trying to remove someone under the influence of alcohol from the back of the plane. Then, after sitting in the plane on the ground at the gate for over an hour, the flight crew announced to us that they were having a weight balance issue and that we should hold tight while they fixed it. Another 45 minutes go by. We finally start taxing... I notice that we were taxiing for a long time, nearly 20 minutes (moving the whole time). It seemed like we were doing circles. All of a sudden, I hear someone say, "Are you kidding me? We are back at the gate." Sure enough, we pulled right back to the gate. They informed us that the pilots "timed out." They said that they would look for other pilots, but couldn't guarantee it. We waited another hour for the pilots, but they couldn't find any. They canceled our flight, and we were told the next flight that was available was 8 PM the next evening. That would be 24 hours in this airport. To add insult to injury, the front desk told us that we would have little to no compensation because this was a "weather-related issue," which is totally criminal in my opinion. The weather was the result of the delay, but NOT the result of our flight being canceled. There was zero compensation for help with hotels (which I expected at the bare minimum). I called to see if there was any availability in any of the hotels that had shuttles from the airport to pay for it myself, and there was not a single opening. So I had to sleep, my pregnant wife on the ground of Denver Airport, and wait 24 hours for our next flight with zero compensation or help. I do not understand how paying nearly $800 for these tickets gets me the experience of sleeping on the ground like a homeless person and wasting a full 24 hours of my life. I would've gotten to my destination faster if I had driven, and that would be 1933 miles of driving and spent half the price that I did on my flights. Because I did not receive reasonable compensation (or any for that matter) for this horrifying experience, I will never fly with Southwest again. I'm trying to be as reasonable as possible. I believe high-paying customers should be treated with much more respect than being gaslighted by telling them it’s “weather.”