Airline: Southwest
Flight:MCI-MDW
Class: Economy
Incident: Cancelled flight due to unclear issues, possibly weather. We cancelled and drove. See details below.
Compensation: waiting to hear back, and I'll let you know!
Details:
Hello. I thought that I submitted a message months ago, but perhaps it never got sent. Our family of 5 was scheduled to travel on the above-indicated flight. We were traveling on three tickets paid with Rapid Rewards, and two passengers were traveling on companion passes. The morning of the flight -- only about 90-120 minutes in advance of the scheduled departure, we were notified by text message that the flight would be delayed. The cause of the delay was not stated. We were unable to reach a Southwest agent by telephone due to heavy call volume, and we were under a severe time constraint. You see, we were in Kansas City and had to arrive in Chicago before sundown, as the Jewish festival of Passover was commencing at sundown, and our religious observance prohibits travel on the festival. We had to make a split-second decision between continuing on to the airport in MCI and awaiting a delayed departure into MDW, which might or might not allow us to arrive into our final Chicago destination by sundown, or abandon the plan to fly MCI-MDW and instead drive our rental vehicle all the way from Kansas City, MO to Skokie, IL (outside Chicago). That drive would take approximately 8 hours, and we elected to go that route. Thankfully, it was a good decision, as we were able to arrive at our Skokie, IL, destination with 30 minutes to spare before sundown, and thereby avoided violation of the festival's restrictions. And, we were eventually able to reach Southwest by phone and cancel our reservations, and the Rapid Rewards Points were credited back to out accounts. However, unfortunately, our decision led us to a very expensive rental cost for the vehicle that we had to drive from Kansas City to Chicago, resulting in a "one-way" drop charge. Our total out-of-pocket cost for the rental vehicle was approximately $500. I am writing to ask Southwest for compensation, as our travel plans were disrupted and we were forced to undertake additional expenses to facilitate our religious observance. May I suggest either a monetary compensation to defray the cost of the vehicle rental or some comparable amount of Rapid Rewards to enable us to continue to enjoy future flights on Southwest? Thank you! --Zow