747Whale wrote:

TheFlyingDisk wrote:

747Whale wrote:

Foreign countries block access, not SWA. Take it up with the countries.

Why would foreign countries block access to Southwest?

It's already been addressed in this thread. SWA isn't blocking visitors from foreign countries. The foreign countries are limiting what websites can be visited.

Again, take it up with the countries. There are numerous countries from which websites can't be reached or a workaround must be used. Talk to their service providers. It's not SWA.

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

FriscoHeavy wrote:

747Whale wrote:

TheFlyingDisk wrote:

Why would foreign countries block access to Southwest?

It's already been addressed in this thread. SWA isn't blocking visitors from foreign countries. The foreign countries are limiting what websites can be visited.

Again, take it up with the countries. There are numerous countries from which websites can't be reached or a workaround must be used. Talk to their service providers. It's not SWA.

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

I think that is right. Southwest should be blocking website from other countries for unknown reason. That's not good for Foreigners.

FriscoHeavy wrote:

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

Sure they are. It's a giant conspiracy. You cracked the code.

Just heard that the cause of this error is in a script on the website. As the site loads it tries to determine in what state the visitor is located. However when you're outside the USA you're not in any state, and that's something the script cannot handle.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Just heard that the cause of this error is in a script on the website. As the site loads it tries to determine in what state the visitor is located. However when you're outside the USA you're not in any state, and that's something the script cannot handle.

Doesn't explain why only certain countries face this problem. I'm using a VPN redirecting to the UK and I can access the site fine, but if were to use a Norwegian or a Singaporean server then the problem occurs.

747Whale wrote:

FriscoHeavy wrote:

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

Sure they are. It's a giant conspiracy. You cracked the code.

Holy crap, are you really going to keep believing that these countries are blocking Southwest despite so much evidence to the contrary?

It is Southwest blocking the page. The "Access Denied" page is from Akamai, the CDN that Southwest uses. I can tell because it has the reference number on it, and I know that's Akamai, because at a previous job, we used Akamai for our CDN and had pages blocked from public access, and the error pages were identical. I saw that page hundreds of times. And in case further proof that Southwest uses Akamai is needed, here you go:

Todds-MacBook-Pro:~ todd$ ping http://www.southwest.com
PING e7466.a.akamaiedge.net (23.221.69.192): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 23.221.69.192: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=18.370 ms
64 bytes from 23.221.69.192: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=16.605 ms

And lastly, if it was a country block, then why would Finland, Israel, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Romania all have an identical blocked page in English, rather than the local language? Because I checked all of those countries with a VPN, and got the exact same block page from each one.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Just heard that the cause of this error is in a script on the website. As the site loads it tries to determine in what state the visitor is located. However when you're outside the USA you're not in any state, and that's something the script cannot handle.

Completely false. See above. It's a CDN block, your browser isn't even getting far enough to run a script on their site.

FlyHappy wrote:

Yossarian22 wrote:

Oddly enough, Southwest tickets are actually sold on the Chinese travel website, C-Trip.

Really???? can you expand on this, sounds very interesting!

Yossarian22 wrote:

I self connected last January, booked a $60USD Southwest flight CVG to MDW, flew ORD>KEF>DUB the following on Wow, self connected again to Amsterdam, got from Cincinnati to Amsterdam for $250 USD.

to be fair, MDW/ORD (the following day) really isn't a self connect; hope you got a "Chicago Dog" or something in that time

Www.trip.com is the international version of the Chinese travel website, C-Trip, look for some Southwest flights.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is Southwest doesn’t want to lose potential Chinese passengers traveling in the U.S. Most Chinese people have UnionPay cards instead of Visa or Mastercards, so buying things on foreign websites is a challenge. C-Trip accepts UnionPay and WeChat Wallet, meaning that this is really the only way for Southwest flights to be available to most Chinese tourists.

I have not used C-Trip for Southwest, but I have booked plenty of U.S. domestic flights with C-Trip simply because I want to use my Chinese money rather than my American money.

I just went to www.trip.com and looked up CVG to MDW on 2/14, and found several flights for 531 RMB on WN.

i've justed opened southwest.com it's working perfect in france just a pity i wont be using them as i don't even have a passport just an ID card !!lol

bluefrog wrote:

i've justed opened southwest.com it's working perfect in france just a pity i wont be using them as i don't even have a passport just an ID card !!lol

However keep in mind that, while it's working in one place in France, the same doesn't have to be true for all of France. Good chance you try it somewhere else in France and it doesn't work.

747Whale wrote:

FriscoHeavy wrote:

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

Sure they are. It's a giant conspiracy. You cracked the code.

Their own customer service agents say it is Southwest (or rather their internet provider?) who blocks access.

I am sorry that you’ve been unable to access http://Southwest.com. Of course, as a business eager to continue growing and serving our Customers, this is a concern for us. Please know that we are aware of a known issue affecting some of our Customers outside of North America, and we are working with our Provider toward a resolution. In the meantime, we’d be happy to help you book anytime over the phone at 1-800-435-9792. Just be sure you dial your country’s exit code prior to entering our digits to be connected. -Alice

L410Turbolet wrote:

747Whale wrote:

FriscoHeavy wrote:

No bud, Southwest is blocking the website from showing in other countries. You have it the wrong way around.

Sure they are. It's a giant conspiracy. You cracked the code.

Their own customer service agents say it is Southwest (or rather their internet provider?) who blocks access.

I am sorry that you’ve been unable to access http://Southwest.com. Of course, as a business eager to continue growing and serving our Customers, this is a concern for us. Please know that we are aware of a known issue affecting some of our Customers outside of North America, and we are working with our Provider toward a resolution. In the meantime, we’d be happy to help you book anytime over the phone at 1-800-435-9792. Just be sure you dial your country’s exit code prior to entering our digits to be connected. -Alice

If it's their provider, why don't they just switch to another provider? Lots of providers would like to have them. Relocating the website to another provider is a piece of cake, might have to switch their DNS entry as it will give them another IP-address but that's it.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

L410Turbolet wrote:

747Whale wrote:

Sure they are. It's a giant conspiracy. You cracked the code.

Their own customer service agents say it is Southwest (or rather their internet provider?) who blocks access.

I am sorry that you’ve been unable to access http://Southwest.com. Of course, as a business eager to continue growing and serving our Customers, this is a concern for us. Please know that we are aware of a known issue affecting some of our Customers outside of North America, and we are working with our Provider toward a resolution. In the meantime, we’d be happy to help you book anytime over the phone at 1-800-435-9792. Just be sure you dial your country’s exit code prior to entering our digits to be connected. -Alice

If it's their provider, why don't they just switch to another provider? Lots of providers would like to have them. Relocating the website to another provider is a piece of cake, might have to switch their DNS entry as it will give them another IP-address but that's it.

It has nothing to do with their provider. Nothing special needs to be done to make a website accessible worldwide - that's the entire point of the world wide web. Someone can put up a web server with a public IP in the middle of Mongolia and I can access it from the U.S. without either of our ISPs having to do anything. It is a deliberate block put in place by their CDN at the request of Southwest's IT (and I'm sure a request they received from corporate). This is a classic example of one department in a large company not having any clue what another department is doing. And like most large companies, it's probably nearly impossible for some low level customer service rep to ask upper management why this block is in place, so they pull something out of their ass to get the customers off their backs.

The fact that they blame it on their "provider" is laughable, when their site is behind an Akamai CDN - the entire point of which is to minimize latency and load times by distributing the site to servers all over the world.