Southwest Question

[KyleAfterAWhile]

I am watching the flights for my trip and getting close to booking, but I do not understand something.

I have been looking at these dates for about a month or so and the flight to MCO has had 6 flights as "sold out", which all magically became available about a week ago.

Same with the return flight from MCO back home. About 8 of the flights were sold out and today they are all available.

How can that many be sold out and now that many have 15 seats available?

 

[Day-Day]

Possible that SWA added a larger aircraft but this probably wouldn't be the case for that many flights assuming there are various routes making up the 6 and 8 flights mentioned.

Were all tickets sold out or just one class like Wanna-to-Get-Away? This could all be due to marketing.

 

[rwdavis2]

Was this just for the Wanna Get Away fares? If so then lack of demand at the higher priced fares probably caused them to move them to the WGA category.

 

[focusondisney]

Yep, you probably were only looking at the wanna get away fares. There were probably higher priced tickets on all those flights. The same thing happened earlier this year when I was looking for flight for my trip in May. The WGA fares showed as sold out on most flights for several weeks. I checked about 10 random cities & it was the same thing from all of them- most flights were sold out of WGA fare s with high priced fares available. Then one day, the WGA fares were all available again. From all the cities I checked previously.

Personally I think Southwest has a new business strategy. So many people have noticed how high their prices are this year. They don't seem to be the same economical airline they were before. They seem to be trying to get more full priced fares booked & are making it harder to book a WGA fare. Reminds me of Disney saying a few years ago that they were going to wean the public off of discount resort rates. And now the discounts at Disney are much more limited.

Other airlines are making hugh profits from seat & baggage fees that SW doesn't charge. I think they are trying to raise fares to make up for it.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

All of that makes sense. Thanks Disney pals.