Southwest has one of the most generous policies when it comes to changing or canceling a flight. If you need to cancel a flight before it takes off (yep, you have right until 10 minutes before the flight departs), the easiest way to do it is on Southwest’s website, which can be reached by this link.
When you cancel the flight, you don’t receive a refund. Instead, you’re provided a credit, which is called a Travel Fund by Southwest. These travel fund credits are different from a Southwest LUV voucher given to passengers for customer service reasons.
You receive travel fund credits if you paid money for your ticket. If you used Southwest Rapid Rewards points, those points are reinstated and any booking taxes refunded to your credit card.
There are several things you need to know about travel funds. Listen carefully, as these rules even tripped me up:
- The credit is issued through the Confirmation number on the original reservation. It’s up to you to remember that you have the credit and while it may be listed in your account, there are reasons why it might not.
- The credit can only be used for the same passenger as the original ticket. You can’t cancel your ticket and then use the credit for anyone else.
- The credit will expire one year after the PURCHASE DATE of the original ticket. Not the date of the flight, but the day you bought the ticket.
- You need to complete your flight by the expiration date of the credit.
In March 2017, we bought tickets to Chicago. We needed to change our flights and I ended up canceling one of the Southwest flights and changing to United because the United tickets were much cheaper. I knew that I’d get a credit for Southwest that we would use for future flights. (If it were today, I never would have done it.)
I’d already made most of our flight reservations for the rest of the year, and Southwest wouldn’t work very well for the few things not booked. We did have a trip the following year, but it was two days after the vouchers were due to expire. I wasn’t going to plan an additional trip just to use the vouchers. So my big plan to save money might have caused me to lose out on $400.
As it turned out, we didn’t lose all the money. I ended up needing to book a solo trip from New York to Seattle. While Southwest wasn’t the first carrier I thought about on the route, it allowed me to leave from the same airport as Sharon, and spend some time in the LaGuardia AMEX Centurion lounge to get some work done.
That flight used up most of my $190 credit but we had nothing to do with Sharon’s funds and they eventually EXPIRED. I Googled and found messages about how you may turn these credits into a voucher, but I couldn’t find a strict policy saying they had to do this.
What did we have to lose, except $190? I hate asking Sharon to make these calls (Note from Sharon: I really detest talking on the phone) but it was her ticket. I looked up a number for Southwest Corporate Sales Support. I’m not sure if this is the correct number but it did work to get the job done. If you want to see the numbers, the list is on Southwest’s Website HERE.
An agent quickly helped Sharon to investigate the problem. The credit was expired but they could issue us a LUV Voucher. $100 would be removed from the value of the expired travel fund and anyone could use this voucher within a six-month period from issue. Unlike the travel fund, It could be used by any traveler, not just the original ticketed passenger. They would issue the voucher to us by email at the address on file and we should receive it in three to four days.
OK, so don’t call for the expired credit and hope to book a flight that day with the voucher as that ain’t gonna happen. As it turned out, we had to call a second time (Note from Sharon: “WE” had to call again? How about *I* had to call a second time? Joy of joys…) and found out the first representative didn’t enter the request properly. After that call, I received an email a few days later with the voucher information on it.
Exceptions
Southwest put some exceptions for existing travel funds and funds created for flights during the peak of the COVID crisis in 2020.
Previously, Customers’ travel funds that have expired or would have expired between March 1 – June 30, 2020, or travel funds that were created because of a cancellation between March 1 – June 30, 2020, had an expiration date of June 30, 2021. We are now expanding the window of funds eligible for extended expiration dates and extending the expiration date of these funds. Funds that are set to expire or funds that are created between March 1, 2020 and September 7, 2020, will have an expiration date of September 7, 2022.
If you have funds covered by this policy, you have until next September to complete your travel. However, passengers who booked tickets after September 7, 2020, and received travel funds are set to see those funds expire. Remember you need to complete travel by the expiration date.
Final Thoughts
I guess the first thing I want to stress is to keep close track of when your Southwest credits expire. We were lucky to use one just under the wire and had to let the other one expire. If the travel fund amount is worth over $100, you can call and try to have Southwest transfer the value to a voucher. Even if it’s just a few dollars, it’s still your money. Just remember that money has to be spent in six months.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
10 comments
Hi. If credits are about to expire (say September 1), and you want to travel after (say September 10), can you book travel for a date like August 20th before the expiration date, and then CHANGE the flight to your desired travel date?
I’ve never tried this but the expiration date of the credit is built into SW’s booking system. When you change a flight on Southwest, you’re cancelling the first reservation and then booking the new one, but at the same time. My guess is that the system wouldn’t let you do the change because the new flight date is past the expiration date of the credit. Depending on the value of the credit, you’re only option may be to take the $100 fee and transfer it into a voucher. That will give you another six months and more flexibility on who can use the money.
One additional comment: The LUV voucher will apparently be issued only for individual flight credits > $100, but not if you have multiple sub-$100 flight credits that sum to > $100. So in my case, I had 3 credits that were each $100 — the 3 sub-$100 credits were not redeemable at all, so I only was able to get a credit for the amount of the over-$100 credit (less $100 for the voucher issuance). Still better than nothing, though…
I think that’s the way it works. Amount of credit – $100 = voucher. So if the credit is less than $100, oh well. Makes it even more important to make sure you don’t forget to use vouchers before they expire.
Is it the $100 fee per travel fund? Or if you have multiple travel funds would it be only $100 total?
The $100 gets deducted from each travel fund when it gets converted into a voucher.
This policy is so customer unfriendly. I bet a very large percentage of these time limited credits get lost in the shuffle of booking and later changing multiple flights. Southwest could set up a place to hold these credits and their expiration dates transparently like Alaska air does with My Wallet. It would cost SW some money to do this as many customers just lose track and forfeit their credits. Paying with money instead of points gets messy when you change reservations. I love Southwest overall but this policy is a problem.
I find it hard to call Southwest’s policy customer unfriendly when it is the most generous refund policy of any airline. I guess it’s much easier to keep track on Delta, United or American where if you need to cancel your flight, you’re probably not going to get anything back because of the hundreds of dollars in fees they’ll charge.
last yr, decided to send an email to the Exec Off, where it kindly issued a 6-month voucher for my sub $100 credit as a 1-time courtesy
You can check your Travel Funds here https://www.southwest.com/flight/travel-funds-search.html