link/source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/southwest-ai ... 33152.html


"With that in mind, a pair of friends named Pavel Yurevich and Chase Roberts decided to create a website dubbed Southwest Monkey (SWMonkey.com) that automatically monitored price changes on Southwest flights. For just $3, the Southwest Monkey site sent out alerts to Southwest fliers whenever a price change greater than $10 on a particular flight was detected. It sounds innocent enough, but Southwest Airlines apparently begs to differ."

"For as much as people tend to hate the hassle associated with flying, Southwest Airlines over the past few years has done a stellar job of alleviating the stress that comes along with air travel. As a quick example, Southwest’s user-friendly cancellation policy allows travelers to change or cancel a reservation up to 24 hours before a flight and subsequently use the amount paid as a credit for another trip. What’s more, Southwest also allows users to rebook a flight if the price drops and then use that price difference as a credit for a new trip."


Which other airlines did they do this with.

Southwest has a history of suing startups that directly pull data from or access their site; prior to WN offering customers the option to purchase early boarding, another website charged five bucks to your credit card; all you did was enter your confirmation code and it would check you in on Southwest.com right at the 24hr mark, and you were guaranteed an "A" boarding card or it was free.

WN immediately filed an injunction and successfully shut them down, rolling out their own monetization of early boarding later once realizing there was a demand there.

Google Flights has basically the same function. Not sure it works with WN, but nobody sued them. This is an example of the broken legal system when the little guy gets sued into oblivion, but a mega-corporation can do the exact same thing.

Also, the concept of an airline owning its prices and flight times is ridiculous. Such data should not be protected and instead be considered public domain. It's just inches from being illegal to tell your fellow passenger what you paid for your seat.

Boo on WN. Not really any different from sites that use cookies. I can't tell you how many times I've researched a destination, airline or hotel just to get advertisements for weeks about said search. What are they trying to hide?

enilria wrote:

Not sure it works with WN, but nobody sued them.

It does not. Google flights will show you that WN has a flight, but you have to go to southwest.com to check the price.

They could simply block the servers that are scouring the site for price information. But it sounds like they would rather be a bully.

enilria wrote:

Google Flights has basically the same function. Not sure it works with WN, but nobody sued them. This is an example of the broken legal system when the little guy gets sued into oblivion, but a mega-corporation can do the exact same thing.

Also, the concept of an airline owning its prices and flight times is ridiculous. Such data should not be protected and instead be considered public domain. It's just inches from being illegal to tell your fellow passenger what you paid for your seat.

Is Southwest not at liberty to establish Terms of Service for its website?

enilria wrote:

Google Flights has basically the same function. Not sure it works with WN, but nobody sued them. This is an example of the broken legal system when the little guy gets sued into oblivion, but a mega-corporation can do the exact same thing.

Southwest does not show up on any Google Flight Searches.

Google flights does NOT scrape airline websites for fares. It gets them from ITA price matrix, like the various Expedia-owned Online Travel Agent websites.

When Kayak started many moons ago, they did this, and all the airlines blocked them and sued them. Kayak reopened by buying ITA data.

Southwest is fully within their rights to block and sue this company.

drdisque wrote:

Google flights does NOT scrape airline websites for fares. It gets them from ITA price matrix, like the various Expedia-owned Online Travel Agent websites.

When Kayak started many moons ago, they did this, and all the airlines blocked them and sued them. Kayak reopened by buying ITA data.

Southwest is fully within their rights to block and sue this company.

I don't think a single person said or believes they aren't within their rights, they just think it's really petty and not a good look.

drdisque wrote:

Southwest is fully within their rights to block and sue this company.

That's the catch. Unless they are hacking into SW servers, they are using publicly available information. And they have the right to do so. So they can't just block them. They can bully them into cease and desist, something big corporations like to do A LOT. The thing they don't understand is that, if that idea is good, those startup boys can be bought out by some corporate monster or some hedge fund with lots of connections and leverage, and then Southwest will regret they even know how to spell "lawsuit". It's something I personally learned at the age of 5 - no matter how strong you are, there will ALWAYS be someone who is stronger.

On a side note, Southwest suddenly stopped being so nice and friendly in my eyes. Not that they care. Looks like they forgot how they started and how big boys tried to shut them down when they were a startup.

You can get airfare / travel alerts on websites.

I don't really see this as a big deal with WN wanting it shut down but then again I have saved a bunch of money over the years rebooking my flights on WN. It isn't that hard to check them yourself. If WN wants to make you check it yourself, instead of making it easy to see when fares drop, that's fine. I would rather that instead of them to start charging change/rebook fees. I can live with the trade off.

Something interesting I found in that article. I'm too lazy to go check SW's terms and conditions, so I'll just believe it's true.

"Southwest’s user agreement expressly prohibits parties from employing “page-scraping or automated tools to access or monitor any portion of the Southwest Website, its content, and/or its underlying fare databases.”

So technically they should be sueing all search robots and cataloguing systems on the Internet because that's exactly what they are - automated tools to access and monitor websites. That tiny detail makes me wonder. Has Southwest ever actually won such lawsuits? Because it sure looks like selective procecution and, in my humble opinion, sounds like a good start for an antitrust lawsuit.

Does anyone know when Southwest changed, and not for the better? When I started flying with them, they were a wonderful airline, with light-hearted singing/joking FA's, casual, very low fares, went out of their way to make sure you were happy, peanuts on peanuts on peanuts, free drinks most of the time etc.

Now they are very "business formal" and their FA's now barely crack a smile or go out of their way to make the customer happy, CS at airports is a joke, and they don't care about keeping loyal customers anymore. In contrast on my recent American and Delta flights the FA's and CS people were wonderful, addressing me by name even with no status, going out of their way to make sure I was happy and comfortable, and very down to earth. I'd say in the past most airlines could learn a thing or two from WN, but now the opposite is true. The "Southwest spirit" is dying.

Super80Fan wrote:

Does anyone know when Southwest changed, and not for the better? When I started flying with them, they were a wonderful airline, with light-hearted singing/joking FA's, casual, very low fares, went out of their way to make sure you were happy, peanuts on peanuts on peanuts, free drinks most of the time etc.

. I'd say in the past most airlines could learn a thing or two from WN, but now the opposite is true. The "Southwest spirit" is dying.

That's pure nonsense. My 30 WN flights last year were, on average, much more customer centered than my 11 flights on everybody else.

And those free (alcoholic) drinks went away in about 1979 -- and nobody else EVER had em outside of first class.

bob75013 wrote:

Super80Fan wrote:

Does anyone know when Southwest changed, and not for the better? When I started flying with them, they were a wonderful airline, with light-hearted singing/joking FA's, casual, very low fares, went out of their way to make sure you were happy, peanuts on peanuts on peanuts, free drinks most of the time etc.

. I'd say in the past most airlines could learn a thing or two from WN, but now the opposite is true. The "Southwest spirit" is dying.

That's pure nonsense. My 30 WN flights last year were, on average, much more customer centered than my 11 flights on everybody else.

And those free (alcoholic) drinks went away in about 1979 -- and nobody else EVER had em outside of first class.

You must've had some good luck then, WN was one of my most flown airlines last year and I can't say one of those flights was "wow" worthy like they have been in the past. It's really been nothing but business formal, "here for your safety", and I'd rather be somewhere else than providing excellent customer service type attitudes. On the flip side, I can pick out Delta & American flights last year where I was extremely impressed by the service or the attitude of the employees.

AirbusCanada wrote:

Southwest does not show up on any Google Flight Searches.

Neither does it on SkyScanner. At least, it does but without showing any fare. As far as I know Southwest is the only airline in the world where showing the fare is blocked on external websites.

Another thing about the Southwest website is that it's completely unreachable from outside the USA. If here in the Netherlands I browse to their website I get Access Denied. However if I browse to their site using a US-based proxy server I do get access. I always figured SkyScanner also had their servers based outside the USA and therefor couldn't access the Southwest website either to read the fares.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Neither does it on SkyScanner. At least, it does but without showing any fare. As far as I know Southwest is the only airline in the world where showing the fare is blocked on external websites.

Allegiant is another.

This sounds like a good, productive website used by many. It's a shame that southwest decided to get ugly with the people who designed it. They should have offered them jobs instead:)

See, on a SAN-SFO flight I noticed my & adjacent seats were in need of maintenance - I don't remember exactly but the tray table latch was hinky on one of them, would come undone in a gentle breeze, which I interpreted as a serious safety issue. Also the armrests something. Coming undone.

So I wrote a letter - I like letters better than email - and mailed it from the post office on Sutter Street in San Francisco, see. And I never heard back.

See, when I was in my teens I heard about this thing called salmonella, and I wrote a letter to Ben&Jerry's asking why I shouldn't be concerned about salmonella upon consuming their cookie dough ice cream, since of course cookie dough's got raw eggs in it. They responded promptly with a friendly letter explaining that their eggs were heat-pasteurized, and they also included a charming little Ben&Jerry's refrigerator magnet. That's the kind of company Ben&Jerry's is, and for a long time it seemed like Southwest fancied itself the same kind of company. I'll not complain about not receiving a free WN fridge magnet, but they could've written back with a quick thanks-for-the-tip-we've-forwarded-your-letter-to-the-maintenance-guys-come-fly-us-again.

But they did not.

(Heck... did they even at least fix the unsafe seats?!??? I shan't know, shall I...)

AirbusMDCFAN wrote:

link/source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/southwest-ai ... 33152.html


"With that in mind, a pair of friends named Pavel Yurevich and Chase Roberts decided to create a website dubbed Southwest Monkey (SWMonkey.com) that automatically monitored price changes on Southwest flights. For just $3, the Southwest Monkey site sent out alerts to Southwest fliers whenever a price change greater than $10 on a particular flight was detected. It sounds innocent enough, but Southwest Airlines apparently begs to differ."

"For as much as people tend to hate the hassle associated with flying, Southwest Airlines over the past few years has done a stellar job of alleviating the stress that comes along with air travel. As a quick example, Southwest’s user-friendly cancellation policy allows travelers to change or cancel a reservation up to 24 hours before a flight and subsequently use the amount paid as a credit for another trip. What’s more, Southwest also allows users to rebook a flight if the price drops and then use that price difference as a credit for a new trip."


Which other airlines did they do this with.

When did the cancellation policy change to 24 hours? As of December it was 10 minutes before flight, not a day.

kiowa wrote:

This sounds like a good, productive website used by many. It's a shame that southwest decided to get ugly with the people who designed it. They should have offered them jobs instead:)

I absolutely agree with you. Sounds like Southwest doesn't want people to fly with them. Everywhere people search for airfares Southwest is invisible. As a result these people end up flying another airline when they could have flown Southwest instead.

Here's a threat on their support website about their website not being reachable from outside the USA:

https://www.southwestaircommunity.com/t ... td-p/47364

It's marked as solved, and their solution is that you can always call them to book over the telephone. Sure that works if you want to book, but it doesn't work if you just want to compare options. Southwest can be one of those options, but by blocking access to their fares they've chosen not to be an option and draw the passengers straight into the hands of the competition.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

AirbusCanada wrote:

Southwest does not show up on any Google Flight Searches.

Neither does it on SkyScanner. At least, it does but without showing any fare. As far as I know Southwest is the only airline in the world where showing the fare is blocked on external websites.

Another thing about the Southwest website is that it's completely unreachable from outside the USA. If here in the Netherlands I browse to their website I get Access Denied. However if I browse to their site using a US-based proxy server I do get access. I always figured SkyScanner also had their servers based outside the USA and therefor couldn't access the Southwest website either to read the fares.

I booked a couple of flights while in New Zealand last month. I also checked in and downloaded my boarding pass.

Airstud wrote:

See, on a SAN-SFO flight I noticed my & adjacent seats were in need of maintenance - I don't remember exactly but the tray table latch was hinky on one of them, would come undone in a gentle breeze, which I interpreted as a serious safety issue. Also the armrests something. Coming undone.

So I wrote a letter - I like letters better than email - and mailed it from the post office on Sutter Street in San Francisco, see. And I never heard back.

See, when I was in my teens I heard about this thing called salmonella, and I wrote a letter to Ben&Jerry's asking why I shouldn't be concerned about salmonella upon consuming their cookie dough ice cream, since of course cookie dough's got raw eggs in it. They responded promptly with a friendly letter explaining that their eggs were heat-pasteurized, and they also included a charming little Ben&Jerry's refrigerator magnet. That's the kind of company Ben&Jerry's is, and for a long time it seemed like Southwest fancied itself the same kind of company. I'll not complain about not receiving a free WN fridge magnet, but they could've written back with a quick thanks-for-the-tip-we've-forwarded-your-letter-to-the-maintenance-guys-come-fly-us-again.

But they did not.

(Heck... did they even at least fix the unsafe seats?!??? I shan't know, shall I...)

Unfortunately, most large companies, including Southwest, have switched over to strictly email, and any letters most of the time end up lost/thrown out.