any insider info why Southwest flights are almost sold out

[MIChessGuy]

Last February, I booked a $223 R/T out of Detroit Metro with 1 stop each way in ATL for my late August trip. I see today that the same itinerary is up to $275. As the above posters noted, there are just fewer and fewer SW nonstops to MCO these days -- in the case of DTW, zero in fact. There's a competitively priced nonstop out of Flint, but the outbound leaves at 6:50 a.m. or something, and to borrow a phrase, Homie don't play dat. And there's Allegiant out of Toledo, and Spirit which *is* nonstop out of DTW but you can probably guess how I feel about them.

Anyhoo, I took this same Atlanta-connection route last winter and everything worked out great. Hoping for a repeat.

 

[georgina]

US Air no longer has any non-stops between PIT and MCO, and SW has only a few each day. One of my Sept flights is showing all the wanna get away fares sold out. In Jan SW canceled our 8 PM flight home to PIT from MCO, so we had to leave in the afternoon instead. It is getting tougher!

 

[delilah]

In my opinion, Southwest never had great service or fares flying from/to Indianapolis. When there was ATA, we used them, then Airtran. Two weeks ago, I was making a trip to a medical conference in Anaheim. My original flights were booked through Denver to get to SNA, to through LAS. SNA is about a 45-minute flight from SNA, and LAS to IND is about 3.5-4 hours. To be perfectly honest, I preferred changing planes in Denver because that very nearly split the trip into two equal parts. The layover in LAS was also short. On the way to California, the plane just stopped in LAS. I barely had time to get off the plane and go to the restroom. They were already boarding the flight by the time I returned to the gate. Somebody decided that they wanted my original seat, so, I had to retrieve my computer bag from around their feet. (I know, some people are just stupid; I wonder if the fact that there was a bag under the seat in front of them fired any neurons in their brain). The seat directly behind my original seat was open, so, I just took it. In my experience, it isn't quicker to board on Southwest. On my recent flights, it took a very long time because there was no space for carry-ons for the last boarding passengers. Of course, some people were boarding with more carry-ons than I had checked in luggage for my week long conference. On my return trip, some woman boarding late dropped her carry on to the man sitting in the aisle seat, I guess because it was too heavy for her to lift, and there wasn't enough space. I know, I know, we should only carry on as much as we are able to lift above our heads, but, it has been rare that somebody hasn't offered to help me if I wanted to use the overhead bin. And, the layover on the return flight to IND was even shorter. I was afraid that the plane would be delayed in SNA, and then I would be stuck in an uncomfortable position for the 4-hour flight to IND. But, fortunately, that wasn't the case. So, it just gets worse and more expensive.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

I had no problem booking around the same window: $188 round trip from Austin for 4. But, I booked a month ago. Try out of Reagan, they are cheaper lots of times.

That's unusual; usually flights out of DCA are more expensive than BWI or IAD. Southwest's fares are almost always the cheapest out of BWI.