I would purchase them. You can always change your flight to the cheaper one (even if it's the same exact flight) and get the credit back. Unfortunately, that's a week that's unlikely to drop due to demand and they typical only drop prices to fill that demand. The fact the wanna get away fares are already all sold out tells me it's already a packed flight, so prices are unlikely to drop.
I think they aren't sold out of wanna get away fares. They don't say sold out. It just says unavailable. I have $1500 in voucher credits. Which you would think would get a family of four from ohio to florida, but even with that much credit, I'd have to pay out of pocket. The amount I'd have to pay out of pocket I could probably pay less if I just book flights with an airline like frontier or spirit. Thanks for your advice!
I fly Southwest exclusively through work and typically if it says unavailable, it means they've sold their allotment of those lower fares and are only selling the higher ones. Now that doesn't mean someone isn't going to move or cancel their flight that was on the wanna get away fares in the coming weeks and they won't open back up. Given the time frame you're wanting to fly and sounds like you're flying to a very popular destination in Orlando, it's highly unlikely you'll see much of a fare decrease. Luckily, you aren't losing anything by booking the flights as you can cancel and change up until the day before. Small tip as well, if you're not doing the wanna get away fare, you should be able to make same day changes free of charge, so if there's a lower fare for a less desired departure time, you can book that and then it's probable you'll be able to make the change to the better departure time on that day. It's a gamble, but depends on the price differences if there is one.
I ended up booking as well. I also looked at the the other airline and saw their prices were high. Thankfully my vouchers offset some of the cost. However without the voucher, my flights total cost the same amount as what it cost to fly to hawaii last year which is insane. Part of the issue is my husband can't take off work the day before the cruise. He's a teacher and they won't allow you to take vacation days before or after a holiday/spring break. And I'm definitely not taking the chance of flying in the morning of. So our flying window was short.
A word of warning that airlines ... Southwest included ... have a tendency to change their flights. We booked Southwest last spring break, and then about 6 weeks out, they cancelled our Sunday morning non-stop flight home and tried to reschedule us on an evening flight home that didn't arrive well after midnight. I quickly rescheduled us on their afternoon flights, which at least allowed the kids to get home at a reasonable time and get to school the next morning.
This is a good tip; always check your flight times, especially as you get closer. You should get an email if they change it, but that doesn't always happen. But, if they do change the flight schedule and it's a significant enough change, they should also let you switch flights free of charge.
Ah, okay. I couldn't remember if they would let you do that for any flight time change they made, or if there was a threshold for what would be considered 'significant' enough to be disruptive (and therefore necessitate a change on the traveler's part). I know I've had my flight times change by small amounts before, I never really looked if I could rebook because that didn't seem to be a big deal for me.
I remember once we booked a flight at a time we didn't really want because it was cheaper. Then it changed by only a small amount (literally 5-10 minutes) and we rebooked for the time we wanted. Normally, we probably wouldn't have checked either, glad we did!
