Hey all you Southwest Air experts

[abitjaded]

Southwest just came back to Denver. I was all excited thinking I would get a great price to Orlando. But....

We are going in October, no fares yet. Never heard of an airline that only books a few months ahead! When would you expect to be able to get a price for October 21-30, 2006?

I loaded the Ding thing, wouldn't have had a clue except thanks to you all.

What happened with some Phoenix fares has me less than convinced Southwest has good deals. For Pres Day week-end Southwest came out hundreds more expensive for four tickets.

Denver to Orlando has always been a challenge. United and Frontier are the only direct, and the prices tend to stay very high ($350 at the moment). For grins I tried running May dates on Southwest's site and Sidestep gave me good prices, at least for the competing airlines that require one stop, as usually happens (Delta, American and others gave about $250, not atypical).

What do you all see with Southwest? If I wait till October is bookable, will all the other airlines come down? Or not the non-stop? The one-stop nearly always are a whole long gruelling day, especially in October if a hub has lousy weather and we really want to avoid them. So not worth doing unless the price is a great deal.

And one more thing.... When I read Southwest's special fares, it appears if I do buy, then have to cancel, there is full credit? So no penalty? Really, just have to buy tickets on Southwest at some other point? Having just had to pay $100 a ticket to Frontier to re-book dates to Phoenix, I'm a weeee bit doubtful.

Carla

 

[challada]

Yes, you can change your booking at any time and get that complete credit applied...we did it both on a flight to Chicago and our flight to Orlando and the credit basically paid our fare home!

For us, SW has significantly cheaper airfare across the country (we fly from Seattle) than anyone else. The best rates I could find on any other airline ran about $450/person (and there are 8 of us) while on SW roundtrip to Orlando adds up to about $280 (and I'm still waiting for Dings on our return to see if I can get more credit...LOL). Frontier was our next best price at $450 and my DH refuses to fly them b/c of their maintenance records.

Of course, if your time is valuable and you don't want to spend time waiting for fares to open, then, yes, pay the higher fare on another airline. You are not going to have to sit around and play the guessing game of when things will open.

 

[abitjaded]

Challada, do you book your outgoing as soon as it becomes available, then wait to get the return? Does Southwest often use this cusp? When dates are added is it months at a time or just a few days or weeks? Does the price for a one way stay low? Or are you always better off waiting until you can book the whole round-trip?

Carla

 

[challada]

Carla-

Yes, we book each direction separately as it is how their system is set up anyway (if you go to roundtrip, it asks you to pick each direction anyway). SO as soon as it becomes available, we book. This year it happened that our outbound to Orlando was March 31 but our return is early April. March became available, so we booked, then when April came up, we booked it.

They tend to release a few months worth of fares at a time. So we bought March fares back in October, then seemed to wait forever and booked April in December (longer wait then I've seen before on their release times). I believe they are open thru early June right now, so we are waiting for summer fares to be released soon so we can book a few summer trips as well.

You can change your fare at any point if you find it lower just by using your confirmation # and name, then you will have your credit amount for applying. We've found that even some of our low fares have gone even lower and we could get credits for the difference, but you have to keep watching. Right now, I'm sitting on about $250 in credit for the difference just in one leg of one of our Orlando flights. I'll use that for a summer trip! YEA!

Hope that helps
Chris