Hectic trip home on Southwest from LA


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Not in LA anymore

At 5 a.m. we got a text from Southwest telling us that our flight home was cancelled. At first I thought it was our Las Vegas-Des Moines flight, due to snow. But it turned out to be our Burbank-Las Vegas flight — no snow but instead due to labor unrest with the mechanics union, a bunch of flights were cancelled. argh.

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Ditto

We ended up getting a flight from LAX which involved considerable hustle and hassle to get there (a much long Uber ride at 6 a.m.) but we made our close connection without a hitch, thanks in part to a nearly 1/2 hour early arrival. Phew! One trick I learned: I could NOT use the Southwest website to find an alternative flight. It didn’t work. At first I called and pressed the number for the “change existing flight reservation” (or some such)…and the wait for a callback was 55 minutes. So we called back and pressed the number for “make a new reservation” — miraculously, that was an 8 minute wait. (Why help existing customers when you can get new paying customers, right?) As it turns out we didn’t really have 55 minutes to spare because we had to hightail it to LAX for our alternative flight. Live and learn. Bit disappointed in Southwest, which I’ve long flown and liked.

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Filed under Airlines, California, flying, Los Angeles

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