I'm wondering if I am just screwed or if there has been any success in getting Southwest to reimburse or otherwise offer some kind of restitution for the following situation:
Yesterday we had a rewards flight going from PBI (6:35pm) heading to MDW (10:50pm arrival) via BWI where we would need to change planes. The PBI flight was delayed approximately 45min due to waiting on the plane to arrive (learned later) which made the plane change at BWI impossible. While the airline notified me of the delay, it did not offer any solutions or state a reason. As quickly as possible after I saw that notification we headed to PBI to see if there were any earlier flights or options for us (me + wife and 2 kids). So, we turned our rental car in and got to the desk just before 4pm. The agent there indicated that their flight going through ATL was full and that they didn't have anything else tonight from PBI. They were able to give us a flight leaving from another airport (FLL departing at 8:30pm) with a stopover in STL (no plane change) that would take us into MDW (11:50pm arrival - ended up after midnight). Otherwise we needed to wait until 6am tomorrow to fly out of PBI.
We took the FLL option and had to rent another car to get us from PBI to FLL at our own expense. Similarly, if we had waited until the next day we would have at least have needed to get a hotel for the night and take an Uber to/from the hotel. These would also have been at our own expense. Southwest said it was a weather related delay that caused the plane to arrive late so they "can't do anything" but to me it feels more like they won't vs. can't. Is this typical? If they had told me they were delayed to weather and could not otherwise help me at PBI much earlier, then I could have (potentially) kept our original rental car and just driven it to FLL much earlier to take an earlier Southwest flight to MDW and not have wasted so much time unnecessarily going to PBI. It's a sucky situation, but I don't know that I think we are the ones that should be on the hook to come up with a solution. There was no offer of a car, hotel, or to put us on another airline's flight. It seems pretty crummy to me.
Thoughts?
