Southwest Airlines
Industrials
53
out of 100. Number 190 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Southwest Airlines does well
- No forced arbitration: unlike most major US consumer companies, Southwest's Contract of Carriage does NOT require passengers to arbitrate — you can still sue in court individually (confirmed by Stanford Law School's analysis).
- Rapid Rewards points never expire, and flight credits issued before May 28, 2025 never expire.
- The privacy policy includes a visible 'Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information' opt-out link plus deletion and correction requests with an appeal process.
- Flight credits from non-Basic fares are transferable to another Rapid Rewards member — more generous than typical nontransferable credits.
You cannot join a class action against Southwest over anything — every passenger must fight alone, even for a widespread problem like a mass cancellation.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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You cannot join a class action against Southwest over anything — every passenger must fight alone, even for a widespread problem like a mass cancellation.
Both Passenger and Customer agree to waive any right to assert any claim against Southwest as a representative or member in any class or representative action.
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Join Rapid Rewards and you give up your right to a jury trial and to class actions, agree to sue only in Dallas County, Texas, and must bring any claim within 2 years of it accruing or it is 'permanently barred.'
NO TRIAL BY JURY: YOU WAIVE A TRIAL BY JURY IN ANY ACTION OR PROCEEDING BETWEEN YOU AND SOUTHWEST ARISING OUT OF AND/OR RELATING TO THIS PROGRAM. ... NO CLASS ACTIONS: YOU WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO PURSUE DISPUTES ON A CLASSWIDE BASIS. ... You and we consent to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts within Dallas County, Texas.
Rapid Rewards Terms & Conditions, Section 7 'Additional Program Rules and Regulations'
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Buy the cheapest Basic fare and cancel it more than 6 months after booking, and you lose the entire fare — no credit, no refund, nothing. Flight credits on all other fares now expire in 6–12 months.
Upon voluntary cancellation, the fare paid for unused Basic fare segments, including taxes and government fees, is returned as a Flight Credit unless it has been six months or more between the initial ticketing date and the date of cancellation. In that instance, the Passenger will forfeit all funds associated with the fare segment upon cancellation.
Contract of Carriage (Passenger), Section 4(c)(4)(ii) 'Flight Credit' (55th Revised 01/27/2026)
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Southwest hands your personal information to business partners so they can market their own products to you (e.g., the co-branded credit card bank), and explicitly says these disclosures can happen without telling you.
With our business partners, affiliates and other third parties including for purposes of sending their own marketing and for other promotional purposes. For example, we may share your information with our financial institution Rewards® Partners for their direct marketing purposes, which may include, but is not limited to, marketing their co-branded credit cards to you. ... Such disclosures may be carried out without notice to you.
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Southwest buys extra data about you — household income range, job and education history — from third parties and attaches it to your profile, records your screen while you use its site, and ignores your browser's Do Not Track request. It also logs the websites and apps you use on inflight Wi-Fi.
We may obtain information from our partners and append it to our existing user information... This information may include, for example, your travel preferences and activity, household income range, employment and education history... We and our agents, vendors, and service providers may use session replay and other technologies to collect page interaction information... (such as content entry, mouse movements, screen captures...). Like many websites and online services, Southwest currently does not alter its practices when it receives a 'Do Not Track' signal from a visitor's browser.
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Southwest can change, suspend, or devalue Rapid Rewards whenever it wants with zero notice to you, and your points are legally not your property. (The Privacy Policy also reserves the right to change its practices with notice as minimal as revising the date at the top.)
Southwest reserves the right to amend, suspend, or change the program and/or program rules at any time without notice. Southwest reserves the right to end the program with six months' notice. Members do not acquire property rights in accrued points and rewards.
How these were found
Contract of Carriage text read via a verbatim mirror (whydima.ggff.net hosting of the official CoC PDF, 55th Revised 01/27/2026) because the official southwest.com Contract of Carriage page (currently 57th Revised 09/03/2026 per search index) was not fetchable; quoted clauses were cross-checked against current search.southwest.com snippets of the official document. Rapid Rewards Terms & Conditions and the Privacy Policy were read directly from southwest.com on 2026-10-01; neither page displayed an explicit version or effective date. Flight-credit expiration rules corroborated with Southwest's official 'Updates May 28 2025' fare document (hosted on purchasing.nv.gov). No-arbitration status confirmed via Stanford Law School's analysis of the Southwest contract.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.