Any Way to Book Southwest Without Awards?

[Piglette]

Do you know of a way to book SW flights if I don't yet have the Rapid Rewards award? Here's the convoluted story.

We've booked a SW trip in November - using 2 Rapid Reward vouchers and paid for 2 tickets. Looks like we may have to cancel the November trip. If we do that, we'll take a Spring Break trip to WDW instead (yippee!). Hitch is, we won't know if the November trip is cancelled til mid October or early November. The Spring Break schedule for SW will open before then, and since those flights close up quickly, I feel I need to book something when the schedule opens.

The problem is:
(1) I don't want to have to pay for tickets since I don't know if we're going on the March trip. I know I can get a credit if we cancel, but I'm not sure we'll take another trip within a year. Also, it's a lot of money to shell out for a trip we don't even know we're taking.
(2) I don't have any Rapid Reward awards because I've got them tied up with the November trip. I could transfer points over (from Amex), but again, those would expire in a year, and I'm not sure we're taking 2 trips this year.

In the old days, I would have made the reservations, said I was using Rapid Rewards vouchers, and scrounged up paper awards before flight time if I took the trip. Now, I believe you need the award in your bank *before* you can book. Does anyone know a way around this

Thanks!

 

[mareed]

No, there is no way around it now. I actually had this exact conversation with one of the SW reservation agents when I was making a reservation. A rapid reward reservation is now tied to a specific reward.

 

[Piglette]

Thanks, mareed.
I did have an idea last night. I just found out that SW still lets you convert the electronic awards to paper awards, if you prefer. You just have to call and ask. I think I'm going to try booking the March trip saying I have (or will have) paper awards. If/when the November trip cancels, I can then have those electronic awards converted to paper (if they won't let me just transfer the electronic awards over to the March reservations). We'll see if that works!