Southwest periodically make flights for further in the future available. You can now book flights through April 24, 2022. Southwest has a good cancellation/refunds policy. You either get a credit towards a future flight (Wanna Get Away) or cash refund (Business Select or Anytime). That means it’s often a good idea to book as soon as the schedule is released and then check back to see if it has dropped in price, if/when it does you can just click ‘change flight’.
My wife and I are going to the Bahamas in January flying out of Albany, NY. Right now Southwest doesn’t not show any flights available on the Tuesday we fly out. Is it possible they might add that date later? Thanks.
Yeah, points aren’t what they used to be — though I feel like part of the reason is because they need to recoup costs for the current pandemic.
Hopefully after the pandemic, they’ll make the points stretch further.
Points on Southwest are almost exactly proportional to cash cost (a few small fees factored out). So there’s not really a better or worse time to use them, compared to cash. (That’s not how it works with miles at legacy airlines, though.)
The person below who talked about how many points were needed didn’t mention what the cash cost was, but that was probably high too, since demand is outstripping supply these days for all things in and to Hawaii.
I think we’re mostly annoyed that cash prices are so high across the board domestically. I’m not convinced that this is temporary though, as permanent cuts in business travel might mean we never go back to the good ol’ days of cheap flights. Maybe international travel reopening will create some downward pressure on domestic flight prices.
I just booked four one way flights to Hawaii from Kansas City (layover in LAS… Centurion Lounge!).
Points were 43k for Getaway!!! That’s the highest I’ve ever seen. Three hours later half of all the Getaway flights were gone.
We’ve gotten great value on SWA flights to Orlando in the past. Not this year. American seems to be a better option at the moment.
Same here from RDU to MCO for January. Delta is actually 50 cents cheaper round trip for us, minus any checked bag fees. They also cut the flights from 3 non stop flights to 1 with times that don’t match what we need. Delta retained their 3 non stop flights.
Question…if u have companion pass and u book a trip out after its expiration can u still add companion? ….prob a dumb question lol
@Avi thanks…damn completely?!?! Sorry about that!
Jeez, these Southwest points sure don’t go as far as they used to. Fares way up, point values down.
Tip, use points on high $ flights. Better value. But yeah not like it used to be.
In the past I often used my points for round trip between Oakland and Baltimore, always nonstop flights, averaging about 13k points ($200?) each way. Looks like they dropped that as a nonstop route and the best fare for the dates I want is 21k ($300) each way with a plane change. What really stings is that I’m paying more for worse (not nonstop) flights AND I won’t have a companion pass next year. So, 168k points instead of 78k points for 4 passengers. But hey, better than the suckers paying cash I guess, and if by some miracle the prices drop for the popular dates I’m looking at, I can rebook at the lower points price.