Pro-Tip for Southwest flyers

[TiggerBouncy]

Just had an interesting experience. We had booked (like usual) wanna get away. I was bumping around the website and noticed that we could upgrade our return flights back and figured - what the heck - might as well check the change in cost to upgrade.

Turns out our cost to upgrade was -$26. That is they paid us $26 for the honor of upgrading us.

The lesson here - check those costs on a semi-regular basis. You might have a similar case. They won't give it to you at the airport, but you can get an upgrade and a refund for a moment of your time. We are 5 days before our flight.

 

[sethschroeder]

You should always keep checking Southwest as prices move all around.

 

[Skicks35]

Yea, SW always adjusts their pricing, so it pays to check every so often even after purchasing your original tickets. They do make it super easy to change/update your flight information, even if you're keeping the same flight, just selecting the newer/lower fare. The catch is (at least for the lowest category: "Wanna get away") they refund you the difference in SW travel funds/gift cards, so it's not a straight refund.

 

[LSchrow]

Another suggestion, use Rapid Rewards to book, & the points go right back into your account without any restrictions (Ticketless Travel Funds are only good for 1 year from date of original purchase, only for the original passenger, & there is a max of 3 forms of payment allowed). Our November flights have gone down to less than half what they were originally.
It's definitely worth getting the SWA CC if you use SouthWest fairly often. Btw, I just found out that the $75 Annual Travel Credit on the Priority CC is good for buying extra points too. They just had a nice sale, & I added 5K to my point balance for about $15 (we have 2 cards, so use the other $75 for the 9/11 fees).
We haven't paid anything OOP for Domestic travel in years

 

[mac_tlc]

My SW tip is to always book one-way flights. That way if one leg goes down and the other goes up, you can still get the lower fare on the one that went down. I never book round-trip on SW.

mac_tlc

 

[Wiltony]

My SW tip is to always book one-way flights. That way if one leg goes down and the other goes up, you can still get the lower fare on the one that went down. I never book round-trip on SW.

mac_tlc

This one doesn't make sense to me. When you review the price of the different legs of a round trip flight and see that this situation has occurred, then you just change the one leg that adjusted down and leave the other. You don't have to change them both. Regardless of if you have one-way or round trip you can still just change a single "leg" when adjusting a flight -- there doesn't appear to be any benefit to doing what you're doing, but I'm willing to listen if I'm missing something!

 

[KristaZ]

This one doesn't make sense to me. When you review the price of the different legs of a round trip flight and see that this situation has occurred, then you just change the one leg that adjusted down and leave the other. You don't have to change them both. Regardless of if you have one-way or round trip you can still just change a single "leg" when adjusting a flight -- there doesn't appear to be any benefit to doing what you're doing, but I'm willing to listen if I'm missing something!

Not the OP of this, but I also always book just one way fares instead of round trip for ease of changing when prices drop. I've run into the issue where one leg of the flight has had a time change and also dropped in price/points (on probably almost every flight I've taken in the last year or so this has happened). However, if you try to re-book within something like 72 hours of that, it won't refund any difference (because any flight change within that time period is free and given at the original price). You then have to cancel the flight and rebook to get the lower price. If it's booked round trip, then you'd have to cancel both legs or call to deal with it. It's just easier to be able to deal with the flights when they're only one way in that instance.

 

[LSchrow]

This one doesn't make sense to me. When you review the price of the different legs of a round trip flight and see that this situation has occurred, then you just change the one leg that adjusted down and leave the other. You don't have to change them both. Regardless of if you have one-way or round trip you can still just change a single "leg" when adjusting a flight -- there doesn't appear to be any benefit to doing what you're doing, but I'm willing to listen if I'm missing something!

It used to be as a few said, where both legs of a R/T needed to be rebooked to modify one.
As you stated, that is no longer the case - you definitely CAN modify just one leg of a R/T ticket without affecting the other.
I stumbled upon a disadvantage to booking R/T just this morning tho: our daughter booked R/T 10/7 - 10/11, and the 10/11 return flight went down about 1K points. Because it is a R/T ticket, modifying the return flight now would delete the boarding pass for tomorrow's out-going flight. Hopefully, the lower price will be there after tomorrow & the return leg can be modified without loss, but if not, it's only 1K points so not a big deal.

 

[Wiltony]

It used to be as a few said, where both legs of a R/T needed to be rebooked to modify one.
As you stated, that is no longer the case - you definitely CAN modify just one leg of a R/T ticket without affecting the other.
I stumbled upon a disadvantage to booking R/T just this morning tho: our daughter booked R/T 10/7 - 10/11, and the 10/11 return flight went down about 1K points. Because it is a R/T ticket, modifying the return flight now would delete the boarding pass for tomorrow's out-going flight. Hopefully, the lower price will be there after tomorrow & the return leg can be modified without loss, but if not, it's only 1K points so not a big deal.

Interesting, thanks. I also encountered a minor disadvantage with R/T flights recently as they pertain to the companion pass. I have my wife on my SW companion pass and we were on a trip and needed to modify our return flight to come home earlier. But because the first leg had already been taken, I could remove her from the return flight so we could modify it, but I could not re-add her online -- I had to call SW and they re-added her to the modified return flight. Panicked there for a bit, actually.

 

[CBMom01]

Not the OP of this, but I also always book just one way fares instead of round trip for ease of changing when prices drop. I've run into the issue where one leg of the flight has had a time change and also dropped in price/points (on probably almost every flight I've taken in the last year or so this has happened). However, if you try to re-book within something like 72 hours of that, it won't refund any difference (because any flight change within that time period is free and given at the original price). You then have to cancel the flight and rebook to get the lower price. If it's booked round trip, then you'd have to cancel both legs or call to deal with it. It's just easier to be able to deal with the flights when they're only one way in that instance.

All Southwest flights are a-la-carte, more or less.

 

[aokeefe]

Another advantage to booking one ways with Southwest is that if you are using credits, you can only have a certain amount of payments (I think 3); so if you have 4 people and 4 travel credits you could only use 3 credits if you are booking R/T- if you book 1 ways you could use 2 credits one leg and 2 credits return trip.

 

[ScubaCat]

They used to let you modify both legs of a round trip if one was eligible for a free change, but that seems to have changed recently.