DALLAS — Southwest Airlines, already awarding frequent flyer miles as an apology and full fare reimbursements for canceled Southwest flights during the Christmas meltdown, is now partnering with PayPal to refund additional costs that passengers incurred during that week's scheduling and public relations crisis.
Passengers who submitted receipts through the airline's travel disruption web page report receiving emails from Southwest linking them to Hyperwallet, a service provided by PayPal.
Once their payments are approved, passengers receive a Customer ID which they can use to access their approved funds.
The emails from Southwest said: "Once again, we are truly sorry for the inconvenience you experienced. Reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel accommodations, and alternate transportation (e.g., rental cars and tickets on other airlines) were honored. Any other request such as lost wages, credit card interest, expenses requested with handwritten receipts, etc. were not honored."
A second email from Southwest allows passengers to enter their Customer ID, access the funds and have them sent via PayPal, Venmo, MoneyGram or directly to your bank account electronically. You can even request a paper check if you prefer.
"We're making great progress by processing tens of thousands of refunds and reimbursements a day and we will not let up until we have responded to every impacted customer," Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a Jan. 5 statement.
Southwest reports that most lost luggage has been returned.
Blaine Moore of Mandeville, Louisiana, said she celebrated when a FedEx truck arrived at their home with all four of their bags. Their flights from New Orleans to a Christmas-week vacation in Montana were among the more than 16,000 flights the airline canceled in order to rebalance its operations and get aircraft and flight crews into their proper locations.
Moore said Southwest has fully refunded the round-trip flights they never got to take. But she said she and her husband are still waiting to hear if Southwest will refund the cost of vacation rentals in Montana, VRBO rentals they were never able to reach.
If not, they are out thousands of dollars.
"We lost that money and I put in a claim for them, but haven't heard anything on those," she told WFAA. "Most people I know who had losses have received at least part of what they are owed. I'm just so glad we got our luggage back with all of our stuff intact."