Your money is no good on The Company Plane:
Put away those dollar bills if you’re flying on Southwest Airlines Co. _ beginning Sept. 9, the airline won’t take cash for in-flight items such as beer and wine.
Southwest says on its Web site that it will accept credit and debit cards and Rapid Rewards drink coupons for items that carry a fee, which also includes cocktails and energy drinks.
The only reason I can think of is that unscrupulous flight attendants may have been pocketing some cash. But still, you’d think the cost of installing credit-card systems on thousands of planes would be more than the cost of theft. I guess not.
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22 Responses to “Southwest Airlines no longer accepting cash”Search
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At least we won’t have to hear the annoying, “Does anyone have change for a $20 bill” on every flight!
Sharon Brown should sue. Wait, wrong airline.
2. mike
Does cash give one hemorrhoids?
Looks like a lot of extra time and trouble to me. I never minded “anybody got change”, thought it was a way to kinda unite the passengers….never heard anyone complain and they always came up with the change. On the other hand, I think the “in flight items” should be without charge ….at least for the first one. As for me, I’ll keep my credit card in my pocket. A soft drink and peanuts (at no extra charge) will do me just fine.
3. Rick
It depends on how tightly you wrap them. Kaboom!
For the record, that’s a joke.
I think it may be to lessen the hassel of keeping essentially a cash register drawer full of various change options. What if noone has change or doesn’t want to swap bills? Then there is a predicament. In a retail world, credit is sometimes easier to reconcile at the end of the day than cash.
#6 dcgirl:
You are probably right, but it’s not “customer friendly” which has been Southwest’s trademark from the very beginning. I’ve never seen them unable to come up with the right change…but I don’t fly all that much. If you don’t need a drink to fly, it doesn’t matter. If you do, it’s worth whatever you have to do to get it. I’ll bet they see a reduction in “inflight items”…but maybe not.
#4 wfish
Some airlines are talking about charging for soft drinks now.
At what point does the penny-pinching re:soft drinks become a customer service issue?
btw - KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) still has free booze on its longer flights. Continental charges Bangkok black market prices. I wonder what the relative costs/savings are? (KLM pours out of 1/2 liter bottles instead of those tiny bottles) One solution I’ve used is “Scotland mouthwash”. You get a 3 oz (actually it’s 100ml) travel sized mouthwash, use it, then refilll the bottle with your favorite Scotch or other libation. All you need from the airline is a little water.
Sorry but all I can think of is Yogi Berra in the Aflac commercial “Cash which is just as good as Money”…
Keeping up with the cash from all those flights has to have been a managerial nightmare. You can buy (or lease) handheld cellular credit card terminals for a few hundred bucks. In bulk, the price would drop dramatically. I don’t blame Southwest and now it will be easier in the future to start charging you for other things. If they want to do that, of course.
#10:
They WILL want to do that, of course. Fasten your seat belt.
I’m not sure if the handheld cc terminals they use actually call up the bank right then, or if they upload the transactions after the flight. If the latter, I don’t see how they would be that expensive,
Perhaps the convenience for others who don’t want to pay cash might help with people parting with their “virtual” cash more easily than real cash..
It may actually increase sales of cocktails and energy drinks.. (Energy drinks?! really?)
“This Note is Legal Tender for All Debts, Public and Private”………….Maybe Not
“Southwest airlines: Change to take your money”
No pun intended to RickG’s post #1.
I know people who sit at a desk all day never needing to make change for the gal strolling by the cubicle with a beverage cart.
If you can’t manage a 3 hour flight with out buying booze you might be a pin head or an alcoholic or both.
I actually asked an attorney about that at one point. He said that the real meaning of legal tender is that cash is a legally valid offer of payment to settle a debt. If you offer “legal tender,” and the creditor refuses, he can’t sue you to collect.
This is why a vending machine doesn’t have to take $100 bills. There’s no way to owe a debt to a vending machine, so it doesn’t have to accept any particular method in settlement of that debt.
But it seems to me that if you ordered your drink and then slammed it down before the stew could ask for payment, you would then have a debt to the airline, and they’d have to take cash or forfeit the debt.
Probably wouldn’t work, though.
Question 1: Any way to transform the federal government into a vending machine?
Question 2: So would they have to collect before serving in order to ensure their legal claim to the debt?
The reason is obvious; a means of increasing the salary of flight attendants. Most people probably will add a gratuity (that’s a tip if you happen to be a journalist). Not a moneymaker for those on morning flights but those on mid afternoon to late night flights should make out like a dhimmicrat.
Matt, it might work once. But then no more drinkie, lol.
Funny story: I was on a late Southwest flight from Tampa to Houston - last hop of the night. There were only about seven passengers aboard, one of whom was a tiny woman with a suitcase the size of a Dumpster. I helped her put it in the overhead bin and the flight attendant said, “Thank you! That was really nice. You drink for free tonight.”
“Uh, really?”
“Yeah! What’ll it be?”
“Scotch rocks, and keep ‘em coming.”
And THAT’s why Southwest now requires a credit card.
The Mattster drank them into receivership! Now that’s thirsty!
See? Good deeds never go unpunished . . .