Booking Southwest tickets separately

[chikita]

Hi, Hoping someone with can help me. We are planning a trip in October on Southwest, 2 adults and our 10 year old daughter. I noticed that I can save 80.00 if I book 2 tickets together and the other one separately. Just curious if there are any cons to this, when it comes time to check in. Is there a good chance that we could be in separate boarding groups. Thanks ahead for the help.

 

[JessM]

You will have to check in "separately" because you will end up with different confirmation numbers. It's really not a big deal. You can either open up two pages on your browser and click check in for one and then the next at the 24 hour mark or check in using the app on a phone, ipad, itouch, etc. If you check in at exactly the same time you should end up with boarding positions near each other but they likely won't be all in a row. Sometimes that will happen even if you are on the same confirmation number. Just board together at the highest boarding position.

 

[kamik86]

You will have to check in "separately" because you will end up with different confirmation numbers. It's really not a big deal. You can either open up two pages on your browser and click check in for one and then the next at the 24 hour mark or check in using the app on a phone, ipad, itouch, etc. If you check in at exactly the same time you should end up with boarding positions near each other but they likely won't be all in a row. Sometimes that will happen even if you are on the same confirmation number. Just board together at the highest boarding position.

As JessM said just check in will matter. If your using EBCI this won't matter either because you will all be checked in early anyway. If not its just two numbers to put in when you do check in.

If not using EBCI I recommend you put your daughter with one parent and the other parent separate. Then check in the two people before the individual. If you end up separated (in some cases it can be by a lot if the timing works out) then you can always board with your daughter and just leave the middle seat for your spouse. SW doesn't have a policy on seat saving and its highly unlikely anyone will want the middle seat between strangers until those are the only option so you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[goofy4tink]

Be sure to book your dd with one of the adults. That way, if there were to be an issue, she wouldn't be on a reservation by herself!!

 

[cmarsh31]

Shouldn't matter. My Aunt, mother, and I bought SW tickets last fall, all separately but within about 2 hours of each other (and all got EBCI). Our boarding passes were consecutive #s for both flights.

 

[disney world dreamer]

the con would be that you have 2 reservation numbers that you have to use to check in.

this means that either 2 people have to be checking in at the same time or you'll have to check in for one reservation number and then check in for the other reservation number.

its very likely that you will not get consecutive boarding numbers and possibly get different boarding groups.

you may end up not being able to find 3 seats together but many times people don't mind switching seats to help you out.

even if you are all on the same reservation number if you get a boarding position near the end its likely you'd have the same issue with seating.

so to me i'd opt to save the $$ and take my chances.

 

[buckeev]

We do it on almost all of our flights and never have any big issues. Last trip coming back from MCO, All five of us were sitting in the Hard Rock Hotel Lobby with our SWA Apps open and send info within a couple of secs of each other...
We had everything from an A18 to a B7...They let us all go in with A...(and I didn't even jump up-n-down screaming or anything!)

Disclaimer...Your mileage...and flight attendant...may vary.

 

[n2mm]

WE check in tomorrow with 3 reservations and am wondering how we will land in terms of assignments. We all have EBCI. I purchased the set of 3 first, then the set of 2, then a single. We had to do this because we had 6 credits and 3+ luv vouchers. We always buy EBCI when flying SW because our youngest flyer is 8, so no family boarding for us. Just wondering if the position numbers will come out in the order of purchase.

Just an update...even though I purchased our tickets on three reservations, I got all of our positions in order....A 20-25. Pretty good, and happy I purchased ebci. Coming home we are on Jetblue, so have assigned seating there.