Why does fare checker stop on reservations without a change link?

[jonathanmkosar]

What is it in my reservation that is stopping the change link?

def _get_change_flight_page(self, reservation_info: JSON) -> Tuple[JSON, List[JSON]]:
    fare_type_bounds = reservation_info["bounds"]

    # Ensure the flight does not have a companion pass connected to it
    # as companion passes are not supported.
    self._check_for_companion(reservation_info)

    **# Next, get the search information needed to change the flight
    logger.debug("Retrieving search information for the current flight")
    change_link = reservation_info["_links"]["change"]

    # The change link does not exist, so skip fare checking for this flight
    if change_link is None:
        raise FlightChangeError("Flight cannot be changed online")**

[jdholtz]

This is because Southwest doesn’t offer a way for you to change this reservation directly. On the Southwest page, if you go to this reservation you will see that it presents a message saying why you cannot change the reservation.

[jonathanmkosar]

Yes. Unfortunately, the issue with the change link arises because Southwest requires users to call in for any changes involving a lap child. I wonder if there’s a way to provide a configuration with a dollar amount for the flight and perform a price lookup.

[jdholtz]

There’s been a discussion on this before, so you can take a look if you are interested. #78 (comment).

Here’s the relevant part of my comment on entering the price manually.

I also looked if it is possible to get the price you paid for your flight. I found this forum from the Southwest community (it was written in 2017, but it seems to still be correct). The only ways suggested were to use the change flight page. Last, it isn't reasonable to have the user input the price because this script is meant to be run fully automatically (scheduling of flights, check-ins, fare checks). This would require manual intervention which takes away part of the purpose of the script.

[jonathanmkosar]

Fair. I would recommend configuring an override in config.json under the reservation section for situations like this as a one-off rather than a requirement, assuming we can get the current price of the flight for comparison.

[jdholtz]

assuming we can get the current price of the flight for comparison

Unfortunately I haven't found a way to automatically get that. I could add a way to specify the price you paid for a flight in the config.json, although that may be complex for the user as well in terms of how to specify the price for a specific flight. On top of what I mentioned above, it would also require needing to implement an entirely separate way to search for Southwest flights in the script which I'm not very inclined to do (and I think is out of the scope of the project).

[jdholtz]

@jonathanmkosar do you have any more thoughts on about improving the current system based on my previous comment?

[jonathanmkosar]

No, I appreciate the help.