Booking departure airfare separate from return airfare???

[kkmcan]

Southwest just released their calendar through May 31st this morning and I am totally blown away by the excellent airfare prices out of Phoenix! Problem is only the first half of our flights are available. We want to depart May 28th and return June 4th, which is not available for purchase yet.

Should we go ahead and purchase and then wait for SW to release more dates??? Has anyone done that before?

 

[DVC-Don]

I always book both ways separate. It's easier to make adjustments should the cost drop either way.

 

[kkmcan]

Cool! thanks for the reply. Now waiting for the hubs to get up so I can verify that this works for him too. I'm so freakin' excited, I want to dance around the house but trying to be quiet. No one is up yet around here (Az time)

 

[luvmy2babies]

Looking at doing this too. We want to go May 25th through June 1st. Might work out better financially to book separate anyway since I also need to put my deposit down on our trip this month too. I don't want to wait because they don't have nearly as many non-stop flights available this year compared to years past. Last year I had my choice of 5 non-stop flights. This year there are 2, granted I was going in June then.

 

[SarahKate]

We have rarely ever booked our flights at the same time. It's always a wait and see situation for us. Once one way has a good far, we book it. Then we keep our eyes open for the return flight. I think we booked our flights about 2 months apart!!! I held out for a very long time waiting for the return fares to drop - they never really did, unfortunately. There's absolutely no reason that you need to book both at the same time!

 

[kkmcan]

Whohooo!!! We booked our departing airfare!! I'm so excited!

$112 per person Phx to Orlando. Ya, we have drive to Phx (about an hour and a half away) but we are saving $400+ just on the departing airfare. Hopefully there will be some cheap returning flights when they update their calendar in November.

Plus it's non-stop!!! We've never flown non-stop across the county. It's always been very hard to find flights that are non-stop and if you did they were most likely big bucks.

 

[mlittig]

Usually I have to book my flights separately due to Southwest's booking windows but I like it that way

 

[DisneyForLife]

Whohooo!!! We booked our departing airfare!! I'm so excited!

$112 per person Phx to Orlando. Ya, we have drive to Phx (about an hour and a half away) but we are saving $400+ just on the departing airfare. Hopefully there will be some cheap returning flights when they update their calendar in November.

Plus it's non-stop!!! We've never flown non-stop across the county. It's always been very hard to find flights that are non-stop and if you did they were most likely big bucks.

Congrats on that price, that is excellent especially for nonstop.

 

[Mary T in PA]

We booked not only separate times but separate airlines for our trip we did last weekend. We mainly look at the times, and so we flew down to MCO on SW and flew back home on AirTran.