Southwest Added a European Partner You Cannot Book on Southwest.com

Southwest Airlines began an interline partnership with LOT Polish Airlines on 1 September, making the Warsaw-based carrier the eleventh international airline whose flights can be combined with Southwest’s on a single itinerary. For a carrier that spent five decades refusing to connect its passengers to anyone else’s network, the arrangement is another step away from the closed system that defined it. Bags are checked through, and a delay on one leg is the responsibility of the pair rather than the passenger. What the partnership does not yet include is the ability to buy it from Southwest itself.

The itineraries are sold through LOT, through travel agents and through third-party booking sites. Southwest.com does not currently list them, which means the airline’s own customers have to go elsewhere to buy a product Southwest is party to. Southwest has also not described any loyalty benefits on LOT-operated segments, so Rapid Rewards members should not assume that points earn or burn on the Warsaw legs. Anyone planning to use the partnership should treat the pricing and the mileage question as separate problems and confirm both before committing.

Geographically, the tie-up is narrow but useful. Southwest and LOT connect at Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco, the three US airports where LOT flies long-haul to Warsaw Chopin. From Chopin, the network fans out across Central and Eastern Europe and reaches further to LOT destinations in India, Japan and South Korea. For a traveller heading to Krakow, Vilnius, Bucharest or Budapest, the practical gain is one ticket instead of two and a checked bag that keeps moving while you do.

The partnership fits a pattern Southwest has been building for two years, as it swaps founding principles for revenue: assigned seating, checked-bag fees, red-eye flying and now a growing list of foreign partners. Each individual change is modest. Together they describe an airline converging on the conventions of its larger rivals. The unfinished piece here is distribution, and until Southwest sells these itineraries itself, the partnership will remain something that exists on paper and on other companies’ websites more than in the hands of Southwest’s own passengers.

Sources: Travel Weekly, Business Travel News