Platinum Service Travel

Did you know Southwest Airlines will allow your companion to fly FREE?

The Companion Pass is a sought-after highlight of the Southwest Rapid Rewards program because it's among the most valuable benefits of its kind. It allows you to pick one person to fly with you without paying any airline charges for your travel companion, aside from mandatory taxes and fees, which start at $5.60 one-way.

To qualify for a traditional Companion Pass, you'll need to do one of the following:

Fly 100 qualifying one-way flights in a calendar year, or;

Earn 125,000 Rapid Rewards points in a calendar year. Qualifying points include those that you earn through revenue flights booked via Southwest; those that you earn on Southwest credit cards; and base points you earn from Rapid Rewards partners.

If you meet either of those criteria, you'll earn the Companion Pass for the rest of the year in which you qualified and the following calendar year. So if you earn the Companion Pass in, say, July 2020, it will be valid through the end of December 2021. You'll need to re-qualify every year to hold on to your status.

Here's my link for Southwest Airlines Credit card
Earn points with any Southwest(R) personal Credit Card that will go toward your Companion Pass

https://www.referyourchasecard.com/226/18I9BI29QY

For your information Platinum Service Travel family

Please be advised that there is a delay of passport issuance for up to 18 weeks at the moment!!

If you need to renew your passport, you might not want to wait until the last moment.

Regarding US flight delays, cancellations, etc.

I talked to a friend who works on the ground with a major US carrier that is at the center of many complaints these days, and asked, what is going on??

Summary:
- Airline laid off way too many people at the start of covid. (My thoughts: they also planned to downsize at the time so it fit in with their longer term plans.)
- Now, demand has greatly increased.

- All departments are short-handed. This leads to delays and cancellations. For example, instead of having 6 people to unload a widebody, they might have 4. Obvs that will take longer, and could lead to delays downline. If someone calls in sick, the result is even more short-handed, taking longer to do the same job, more likely there will be a following delay.

It appears that management hasn't adjust flight schedules to accommodate having fewer workers to turn a flight (unload and reload).
- Flight crews are legally limited to the amount of hours they can fly in a month.

Towards the end of the month, if they've been filling in for others, working extra, etc, they won't be legal to fly. They can't fill in at that point. If there's no crew, there's no flight.

- Flights are being overbooked. A lot. (My thoughts: if they are allowing ticket changes, could be they are trying to cover the potential of people changing their tickets. Could also be that they seriously miscalculated the number of people intent on taking their flights.)

- Delays and cancellations can be for lots of reasons (this is always true). A weather delay may refer to weather at the destination, or weather where the flight originates. Delays and cancellations anywhere have a big trickle down effect.

If a flight is cancelled, the crew on that flight won't get to their destination as expected, so their next flight downline may not be able to take off if it doesn't have a crew.

Things to consider...

- Try to keep in mind that the workers you will interact with are not to blame for delays and cancellations, they've been put in the position of having to deal with unhappy customers, they may be burned out.

- If you're booking a connecting flight, might be good to give yourself extra extra connect time.

- Maybe flying at the very end of the month isn't best since that's when it's most likely crews will have maxed out on flying time.

(That's just me speculating.:) )
- Anyone else have tips and comments to share?

Happy Independence weekend from Platinum Service Travel and the Williams family! We travel brilliantly 👏 using our miles ✌🏾🤎🪂✈🛳

Me and my girlfriend lol!

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