SW ? about no change fees

[The 6 J's]

Total noob regarding SW and air fare pricing. (not to actual air travel - just don't have to deal with the pricing part very often).

Can you buy tickets way in advance and if the price drops just re-book to the lower price? If so do you check prices on a regular basis to look for price drops or is there any way to sign up for alerts? For you SW vets how do you go about getting the best price when you have plenty of time to plan?

 

[Dacky619]

If the price drops, there is an option on the main page of the SW site to "Change Flight". Here you can rebook the flight (same flight or you can change if you want to) and you'll get the difference in a SW credit. Those credits are good for one year from the original purchase date. So if you bought a ticket today, for a flight in October, then the price drops and you rebook, your credit would have to be used by May 10th of 2012.

Personally, I do still watch the flight prices afterwards, but usually to see if there is a flight I would prefer that has dropped. We are flying BWI-MCO this Thursday, and our flight was going to leave at 3 pm. A flight leaving at 10 am dropped to the same price, so we were able to switch and now we'll get an extra half day at wdw.

 

[jcarwash]

I am pretty sure there is no alert system. So, I find it to be a bit of a fun game to check the SWA site nearly every day to see if the fares have dropped.

If you use their Recent Searches feature on their home page you can quickly check to see if anything has changed.

 

[1tufgt]

The only alert programs I know of are the ones from other sites. One I know of is airfarewatchdog.com. What you do is enter in your departing city and arrival city and it sends you alerts on fares from those two locations to your email whenever there are price changes for any airlines flying out of those airports.

The one I got this morning from them alerted me that I could fly from SDF - MCO for $296 through southwest since it seems SW is having a sale on Airfare from now till the 5th of Oct is when you had to fly by.

As like others said it's either doing that or just checking it regularly.

Just a note with SW, they usually increase / decrease rates on Tues. / Wed.

 

[The 6 J's]

Thanks for the help all.

 

[jlewisinsyr]

Also, it has been confirmed that any credits provided due to a flight price drop can only be used be the same ticketed passenger.