Has anyone used Rapid Rewards on Southwest?

[mickerbaby]

How hard is it to get flights to Orlando using RR (I fly from Manchester NH if that matters)? I was hoping to use enough RR to purchase 3 tickets. Has anyone had issues trying to get flights using RR? I was told that the number of seats per flight that can be purchased using RR is limited....my question is how limited??!!
thanks!

 

[lawgs]

we have been watching flights from buffalo/orlando for our trip november 12 -19 ....

we have taken to booking one ways to take advanatage of dings...

however, for over a month now, all that has been showing for our nov 19 return was the Fun Fares at 167$ EACH

rather than waiting for a sale, we decided to use one of the new RR to see if we could book our flight back to buffalo that way, it was available so we booked it...it was a weekend ( sunday nov 19 )

to do this in the reservation window

standard reservation

additional options

click on the Rapid Rewards Award Reservations

this takes you to your RR log in...

if you have a RR available it will show a booking screen with all the available flights for the day you are checking, the older RR are better since any seat except for black out dates are up for grabs, with the newer RR there is capacity control so you might find some "unavailable" flights

luckily for us .....we could use our Newer RR for our date and saved a lot over the 350$ they wanted for the one way fare for 2

 

[wdwfan1]

I have had no problem whatsoever, but I used the old rewards. I was not able to use the new rewards for my upcoming trip in November--nothing was available using a reward. However, I was trying to travel on a weekend. I have read that they are easier to use during the week. Good luck.

 

[Michael623]

You might want to hold onto those rapid rewards for a more expensive flight. There have been so many Dings from MHT to MCO lately for $49 with a total cost of about $115RT. I used my rewards to fly from Providence to Orange County to go to Disneyland. The flight is typically $500 or so. You just want maximize your value.

 

[clkelley]

The new RR flights are harder to use than the old ones, as there were no restrictions on those.

However, the new RR flights are still infinitely easier to use than Legacy FF trips.

Case in point, October 2005, I booked three 25K Delta Skymiles tickets to Orlando for May 2006.

I needed a few more miles on the CC to book the fourth ticket, so had to wait. Once the CC rolled over to the next month, there were no more 25K tickets left on the Delta flights.

So, at that time decided to put my older son on Southwest. Then my younger son wanted to bring his girlfriend. So between November and March, got enough CC points for two RR flights. One the old kind, the other the new kind.

I booked the kids using the old and the new RR tickets for late May weekend flights in early March. (I'm referring to 18 & 19 YO Kids)

Then in late April, my older son tells me his girlfriend managed to raise the money to come along with us. We make the arrangements and get approval from her parents by early May.

I go to purchase her ticket on the same flight the other kids are already on, and the flight is totally booked up. However, because you can do one ways on SW, at two weeks before our trip, I was able to switch the outbound flight on the old AND new RR ticket from Nashville to Birmingham, and get all three of them on the same flight. I was also able to switch it where the GF was using the RR ticket and my son was using the paid for ticket, so he was earning more RR credits. (We bought the airfare, she paid for everything else).

I know all this sounds complicated, but because of Southwest flexibility, it was possible. This is totally impossible on a legacy carrier.

 

[clkelley]

Just an FYI, if you go to Flyertalk.com and go into the Southwest Rapid Rewards forum, there are a couple of threads where folks who have new RR credits sitting in their account will look up availability of flights for you.

That way you can see what's available before you transfer CC points over.

 

[salmoneous]

Keep in mind that RR just changed. Under the old system it was easy to use free tickets. There's not really enough expereince with the new system for people to know how it's going to work.

 

[Rpsemont]

I was curious about this too, so recently I checked availablity to use the new RR tickets. The cut off seemed to be around the RESTRICTED FARES and THE ADVANCE PRUCHASE FARES. In other words, If all that's available for purchase is a REFUNDABLE ANYTIME or SPECIAL FARE, you probaby can't use the RR. IF A FUN FARE is available, you probably can use RR . The time I checked, You could also use them when the cheapest available was an advance purchase.