Southwest rapid reward tickets?

[disneyfanUSA]

I received my rapid reward ticket credit today. I went on to their website to try and book a ticket. There are no flights for the days we want to go in July. Does southwest ever release more tickets for rapid reward members? Or do I need to change my vacation days?

 

[mdsd8700]

Honestly I don't know the correct answer as I am new to rapid rewards and was just eligible for my first flight. I didn't book as soon as the window opened for my flight date and was only able to book one leg of the trip the other was not available. On a fluke I checked back a couple of months later and I was able to book the flight that I couldn't before. Not sure if that meant someone else gave up their seat by changing flights or if more seats were offered by SW. Not sure how often this happen, I may have just gotten lucky.

 

[scottmel]

Oh that is a tough one. I got an email from them yesterday regarding a site outage - since they were converting to the new system, etc. Are you able to book ANY month with it or simply no availability in July? Meaning can you pretend to try to book Aug or Sept and if non luck then it could be a system issue b/c of the upgrade. I booked a week ago for August and was a little surprised at the slim pickings that I had....Did you get the free 500 gift card promo too or just the free round trip? If GC, might want to use that now and save round trip for later...

 

[Zerosinthecloset]

Southwests new Rapid Reward program goes into effect March 1, and after that date, if there is an available seat on the plane it can be booked as a RR award.

 

[LidoDeck]

Southwests new Rapid Reward program goes into effect March 1, and after that date, if there is an available seat on the plane it can be booked as a RR award.

This is correct, but pertains only to awards issued under the new program.

For your standard awards on the existing program, you have book travel where standard award seats are available. Recently (like the last year or so), I've had challenges finding availability for award seats. So I converted four of my awards to "freedom" to make it easier to book.

Basically the original program was excellent as if seats were available, you could use an award. Then they made it much harder to use them by limiting availability to use awards. They got pushback from members, so they offered "Freedom" awards which cuts award value in half. Now, apparently, that isn't good enough, so they are giving us back a program where awards are good on all flights, but they are harder to earn and take more travel. I sure wish the original program was back...

But dealing with today's situation...you can wait and hope more award seats become available (it does happen as long as you aren't traveling during a busy time) - or you can convert 2 RT awards into 1 RT Freedom and book almost anytime - or you can find different dates that do have availability.

 

[VLee]

Southwests new Rapid Reward program goes into effect March 1, and after that date, if there is an available seat on the plane it can be booked as a RR award.

That is correct for an award that is earned under the new program; however for rewards earned under the old program, the old regulations will apply.

To address the OP's question of SW later adding more Reward seats. I am not sure of all the time, but they definitely did add more RR seats to flights that I had booked for June.

 

[palhockeymomof2]

I received my rapid reward ticket credit today. I went on to their website to try and book a ticket. There are no flights for the days we want to go in July. Does southwest ever release more tickets for rapid reward members? Or do I need to change my vacation days?

I've found that they sometimes do add more rr seats as it gets closer to departure dates....but i do believe it depends if the flight is filling up or not

 

[wdwfan1]

Shortly after my dates were released I wanted to book a flight with an award ticket for March. There were no rewards available and the price was almost $300 from Long Island to Orlando (per person, one way). I kept looking for alternate dates, but could not find anything that would work for me. I finally did manage to snag the return trip using an award.

After several weeks I was getting nervous and finally the flight down dropped to $239. No reward seats were available, so I booked that flight with cash. I kept checking the price and it came down again so I re-booked. Early this week the flight was available with a reward ticket.

In short, the answer is yes, they sometimes do become available close to the travel date. But I would not count on it happening because you never know.

 

[Disneyhappy]

It has been my experience that awards seats are only available when there is a "web only" Wanna Get Away fare listed which usually coincides with more seat availabilty on those flights (i.e. - more seat availabiliy the lower the fare). If you are looking for high demand dates around the holidays or Saturday early morning departure to MCO or Sunday afternoon departure from MCO, RR seats are difficult to come by. With that in mind, keep checking everyday. I use at least 5 RR seats a year (nationwide) and usually find something I can work with eventually. Rule of thumb appears to be that if the flight costs are higher than other days, there will be no RR seats available. Of course this changes with the new reward system. Good Luck!

 

[disneyfanUSA]

Thanks everyone. We booked a flight for August, so we at least got something.. July would have been alot more convenient, but this will work. We will keep checking for flights in July. We called southwest and the guy said there is only about 6-10 seats available for rapid reward members on a flight and more will open up only if someone cancels....