SouthWest Group Travel

[keyaisunique]

I was wondering if anybody has ever used southwest group travel. I'm planning a disney vacation for me and a few other family members. It's about 15 of us all together. I was reading on southwest's website that they have a group travel program where if you have 10 or more people going the same place you can get the group fare. I was wondering if it is worth it or if we would be better off buying discounted fares through their website.

 

[boswellnakia]

I seem to be the group organizer. I have helped four different sets of people fly over the past year. For airfare, SWA does offer a group fare. It is usually higher than the going rate, but it does guarantee your group a seat at a fixed cost. I have usually just bought the discounted seats. You take a chance that you will consume all of the allotted discount seats and you have to buy the next higher category. This has happened.

With the group seats, you get some flexibility on name changes (I think I remember this). Buying the tickets straight requires you change everyone's tickets that were bought in the same group.

For group prices, we have usualy done better on Frontier if they are available in your area, and I'm a Southwest diehard.

 

[Gary M]

There is a good chance your group will be getting A boarding passes. A few years ago I was flying from Indy to Las Vegas, this was before you could get your boarding passes online. I don't remember if the passes were numbered or were A, B and C. I got to the SWA check in counter early for the boarding pass and didn't get the 1st. group boarding, but the second. I asked the counter person how could this be and she said there was a wedding party booked and they took the first boarding passes. I'm sure the wedding party members weren't at the airport yet, so they had been set aside for them. This was a few years ago so things may have changed since then.

 

[dthogue]

My DD's soccer team just flew Southwest this past February and we booked our tickets as a group. We were not able to check in online and our boarding passes were issued when we checked in at the airport.

Tammy