Southwest - individual booking?

[stacieps]

We are a family of 4 going to WDW in January (SW dates are not actually out for us yet) - I've read about the ability to print your boarding group pass from your home computer after midnight if you have individual bookings - has anyone had trouble booking individually for a small group? I am concerned that I would make the 1st booking then have trouble (flight availability, etc) somewhere between the 2nd and 4th. I'm thinking that it is 'safter' to book all 4 at once then just arrive early to get an "A" - but I'm also concerned that the more people are using their computer to print their boarding pass, the less likely we are to get an "A" even arriving early.

Any thoughts?

 

[maraakl]

If the thought of booking separately bothers you, book them all at once and then call Southwest and have them separated.

 

[Lewisc]

In the next month or 2 SW is expected to allow online checkin for reservations with multiple PAX.

If you book 4 PAX at once you'll get the lowest fare that has 4 available seats. If there are only 2 seats available at a lower fare you'll get all 4 seats at the higher price. If you book individually you'll get 2 seats at the lower fare and 2 seats at the higher fare.

Obviously this assumes that no one else grabs the seats while you're booking.

 

[Mickey_Maniac]

Another suggestion would be to open multiple brwoser windows and book a passenger in each. That way, you can get everything ready up to the point where you actually confirm and pay for the ressies at whatever the best price is. I have done this several times in the past and it works fine. You can then just switch from window to window without having to take the time to retype everything and risk getting a higher fare.

 

[mobetsy]

This is not an idle concern; it happened to me about 6 weeks ago. Ds9 was coming home on a different day from me and ds6, so I needed to do his reservation separately. I booked his, and by the time I booked mine a few minutes later, his flight going was full at the fare we wanted Fortunately, I was able on-line to move him to the later flight I was on, and there's no charge for that.

I didn't know at the time that multiple passengers on one confirmation # couldn't check in on-line; I discovered that the hard way last Sunday evening when I went to do so. Since ds9 had his own reservation, I got his done for an A; I checked myself and ds6 in 1-1/4 hours in advance and we got a B boarding pass. I would've been willing to have ds go on by himself and try to save two seats, but when I talked to the desk agent to make sure that would be okay (since ds9 boarding on his own is thus technically an unaccompanied minor), he told us all to get on together in the A group. Very nice of him

 

[Rpsemont]

A way to do some advance reconnaissance work is to first go in and put in 4 (or more) for the number of seats you're looking for. If it shows the fares you want as available, then you can proceed to do the individual bookings, but if it's not available for 4, you don't even need to try. If I had done that a couple weeks ago I could have saved myself a big hassle. I did 4 of us individually, booking Mon- Mon. When they dropped fares for Tues and Wed travel, I changed us to Tues-Tues. Then they lowered fares for any day so I went to move us all back to Mon-Mon. I got through three, before I ran across the low fare not available. Luckily, i was able to change us all back to Tues - Tues. Opening up individual browser windows at the same time isn't a bad idea either.

 

[kilee]

They also only "give" a certain amount of online check-in's "A" passes. This is to insure that a certain amount of people checking in at the gate will get them too. Also, in coming home from Orlando--- there are sooo many pre-boarders. Sometimes it really doesn't matter which letter you have.