What am I doing wrong with Southwest?

[daileyad]

Okay, I've been watching flights for a while for my parents to come on our trip. I booked them one way so I will change that if prices drop and I have not booked return from Orlando at all yet since it's been so high. I go to Southwest website several times a day and mess around to see if fares have changed. Both yesterday and today I have gone on there and searched roundtrip (even though we've already booked one way) and had great prices pop up. But then if I attempt to change my search to one way or if I try to use the change flight option for the one we already booked, then the low fares disappear when it re-searches. What am I doing wrong? I've tried clearing my cookies and it doesn't bring it back. Is someone else getting on and booking them before I can? I don't understand.

 

[NotUrsula]

A lot of it may depend on the days of the week involved. Very often, you might see a great fare for a roundtrip that is, let's say, Saturday to the following Sunday, maybe $180. However, when you split it out, you may discover that the outbound flight to Florida is $70 on Saturday, and the return flight leaving Florida 8 days later on Sunday is $120.

Load factors come into it, too. Flights with a lot of empty seats will normally be cheaper than more popular flights that are selling faster, because the price automatically goes up as demand increases.

 

[Mickey_Maniac]

That's kinda strange, the Change flight option should work. There is another way you could do this though.
Open two windows.

In one bring up the new reservations and work through it to the point where you would enter payment, this will put them into a temporary holding status.

In the second window, cancel your old reservations, making sure to jot down your confirmation number. As soon as the cancellation on the old one is complete, the funds should be available as ticketless travel funds to be used as payment on the new reservation.

Switch back the the new reservations and enter the ticketless travel funds confirmation number as a form of payment.

Yet another option would be to call SWA directly to see if they can make the switch for you. Depending on the fare category, sometimes they can.

Good Luck!

 

[Lewisc]

There may only be one seat available at the lower fare. I suspect when you search for fares you're checking for one passenger. When you change your reservation the system will give the lowest fare that's available for all the passengers on your reservation.

 

[daileyad]

It's not the one person at fare left because I have tried going back and searching for just one person and it still doesn't show up.

I guess I didn't realize I could cancel our one way without penalty and then just rebook it instead of going through the change reservation. I'm going to have to try that if it comes back up.