MHT to MCO - Question for SWA Flyers

[Sammy]

We are flying from MHT to MCO for NH school vacation in Feb 2005 (Feb 26 to Mar 6). We probably won't see SWA release these dates until September or so. JetBlue has just released their dates through March I believe and I can get round-trip out of Boston for $232 pp. My question to you seasoned "school vacation week fliers" is: Do you think SWA will be any cheaper and should I take a chance and wait for those dates to be released? Or should I take the "bird in the hand" and book JetBlue out of Boston for the $232??? I've never traveled during a school vacation week before so I don't know the historical prices and/or availability of flights out of MHT during that time.

I hope this is not too confusing.....any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

TIA!
Sammy

 

[debster812]

$232 out of Boston for a school vacation week is a good price. You might get a little cheaper from SWA but probably not too much. I would jump on the JetBlue flights now, and have one less thing to worry about.

(I'm paying $249 r/t BOS to Ft Myers on Song in Feb of '05, just for your comparison)

 

[KarenP99]

Just for you to compare, we're flying MHT to MCO non stop round trip for $175.20...that is in September.

I would pay the little extra to avoid Logan, but that's just me!

Karen

 

[Sammy]

KarenP99:

I hear ya about avoiding Logan....I would much rather fly out of Manchester. We live only 20-25 minutes from MHT, so its terribly convenient! But, I have to admit...we flew JetBlue this past February and it's almost worth having to go to Logan. I LOVED having seat assignments and not having to be "cattle-called" for boarding. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the TVs too!

Decisions.....decisions!

Thanks for your reply!

Sammy

 

[hezzie]

Sammy - We live in Merrimack and have been thinking about using Jet Blue for our Nov 30 - Dec 8 trip. The flight times are great. However, we really like the easy commute to MHT.

When you used Jet Blue what did you do with your car and did you go down the night before to avoid traffic? If we used Jet Blue, we would take the 6:30am out of Boston, so we would either have to get up at 3:30am or stay somewhere close to the airport the night before. I can't imagine making the commute the morning of our flight, especially given all the construction on Route 3.

Thanks!

 

[Sammy]

Hezzie:

For our Feb trip, our flight didn't leave until 7:30 PM (DH had to work that day, so we couldn't leave any earlier). Fortunately, my Mom lives in Beverly, MA so we drove the car to her house, and then took a towncar/limo to the airport from there. On our return to Boston, my Mom picked us up and drove us to her house to pick up our car.

This worked well for us on the trip TO Florida as we were very excited and raring to go. However, on the return, we drove 40 minutes from the airport to Beverly, then had to get in our car and drive 45 minutes back to Nashua. We were sooooo tired and the last thing we wanted to do was drive ANYWHERE!

We may end up flying JetBlue out of Boston again next February if we can't get SWA times/prices we need. If this happens, we have already decided to book the towncar service directly from Nashua to Boston and then back again so DH doesn't have to drive when we get back from vacation. If we decide on the 6:30 AM departure time, I think we'll go down the night before and get an airport hotel on Priceline.

Good luck!
Sammy

 

[NHmouse]

We flew SWA from MHT to MCO last Feb. vacation(04) and had to pay $1240 for four tickets. This was to get times that were not 7pm departure from MHT and 7AM departure from MCO. if you were willing to go at these tiimes it was a little bit less(not much!) I booked the first hour that the fares came out and monitered each day several times a day for lower fares but to no avail. The vaction week fares out of MHT are high!! SWA does take advantage of the market this way. But The flights do not change, they are generally on time and MHT is very easy to navigate. I always choose MHT for the convenience!

 

[CRCrazy]

Another quick aside for Sammy - I just checked on Jetblue's site, and you can play around with your dates and times, and get RT for $175 that week still.

We are on vacation that week as well, and will hopefully be going down, but we will wait for Southwest to release their dates - no change fees, credit if the $ goes down, and we LOVE Southwest! I don't like having to be locked in this early - I'm a do it now kind of girl!