Don't forget that on airlines like Frontier or Spirit you're going to be paying for checked bags (and often even carry-ons) vs. Southwest where you get 2 free checked bags per person. Also, Frontier and Spirit have limited schedules; it's likely you'll find flights, but they won't be the exact (or even within a day or two) dates of when you can travel.
Absolutely a good tip - we dealt with that this week (AirCanada cancelled the first leg of our trip and we got rescheduled to a flight with a 10 hour layover!). I’m actually hoping that our new flight will get changed again because I’m not thrilled with the departure time, but it is what it is!
Not necessarily. We booked two weeks ago for July and paid less round trip than we paid one-way our last couple of trips to Orlando. What clinched our decision was that the cheapest "wanna get away" fares were only available on about 1/5th of the options. Could they come down more? Possibly. Would they go up? Almost guaranteed. (In fact, they already went up $50 each way.)
Barring a once-in-a-decade storm disrupting operations, it'll be no better or worse than before. Southwest has been maintaining perfectly average on-time performance since they recovered from the major disruption, and there's no reason to believe that will change in a significant way in the next 6 weeks.
Thank you. I love a good road trip, but I'd like to fly again.
If you’re interested, there’s a recent episode of the podcast The Daily that explains how the recent meltdown over the holidays happened. I agree with Sykes that it’s unlikely to happen again without a huge disruptive storm - the episode helps explain why Southwest was unable to recover as well as other airlines though (I found it pretty interesting!).
That's been my understanding too. SW has a pretty outdated scheduling system, although it works fine on most days. It's only when there's been huge disruptions (like a giant winter storm) that their system really shows its age. SW needs to get on updating that to avoid that happening in the future; however, as long as things are going well and there's no huge disruptions, SW should be doing okay.
I would be shocked if they weren't frantically making those upgrades as we speak. The pilots' and flight attendants' unions have been fighting for it for *years* but now that it has cost them millions of dollars I'm sure they will finally do it.
You can do this with delta now as long as you don’t book basic economy. They will issue a credit voucher for the fare difference.
I think many more are doing it post-pandemic than used to, which is really great for all of us.
I just got an email from them yesterday, apologizing for the madness and sharing next steps. I can't recall the email explicitly stating they were upgrading their systems, but it was heavily implied.
