Song vs Southwest

[jlcd]

We will be traveling to WDW from April 13 to the 23rd 2005, flying out of Hartford CT.
Right now, prices on Delta Song are very high.
We are waiting for SW to release flights after April 1st.
Song has flight times that will work much better for us, but I Don't want to pay their current prices.

Does Song typically lower their fares once SW opens up, or should I take the less convienient flights on SW when they open, assuming the rates will be better??

Thanks for any help you can give me!!

 

[fdecker]

What about the 29th through Jan 5th? Can anyone help? The rates seem more than the $120 - $140 a week rates I keep seeing people post for the beginning/middle of December. Thanks.

-f

 

[stacieps]

I'm flying Song out of Boston in January. I did find that once Southwest released their dates, Song prices went down (it wasn't the same day, but within a few days). I bought my tickets the 1st day I noticed the cheaper fares and got the flight times we wanted (non-stop) for $129 r/t ($516 for the 4 of us), a few days later those same flights on Song were over $700 - Song apparently sells a certain number of seats at lower prices and once they hit that number the price goes up -so once you see a good rate, book it quickly.

 

[BigTigger]

Song prices based on demand models. In certain markets, the JetBlue and SouthWest competition drives the prices down as the glut of seats available means Song doesn't receive the demand they expect (i.e. so many seats sold) at a certain period of time. Competitor fare sales will make a difference to the model and cause Song prices to drop.

Song will not drop prices for blackout periods. An example is November 24th to 28th. Song is sticking to its $180 each way pricing from Boston to MCO despite some very empty flights (and Hartford for that timeframe is even more expensive than Boston). Your return date is in an airline blackout period as it's northeast school vacation time.

Looking at the 13th flight, only the 3 pm flight has a lot of seats. The other two are almost sold out. That will effect the pricing on Song from now on and you can't expect the 7 am or 6:40 pm flights to ever get cheaper.

If you don't want to wait for Song, try Delta mainline out of Hartford as you may find a single stop in Atlanta won't add much time and get you a cheaper price. You can also set price alerts on Yahoo via MyYahoo and see what comes up as airlines change fares. It also shows you dates with available fares under all available airlines offering direct or connection flights so you can play with the system to find cheap fares. Good luck on your cheap fare search!!

 

[jlcd]

Thanks for all the info!

 

[BigTigger]

I sent you a PM too with more details that the board didn't need to wade through.