Booking on Southwest

Walt Disney World
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I am getting ready to book our flights for our trip to WDW from 4/25/26 to 5/2/26. There are 4 adults, all with Rapid Rewards accounts. This is the first time I am booking with Southwest under the new rules, and I am a bit nervous. (We are not booking with points because we are trying to save our points for future use when we are both retired and have a tighter travel budget.)

I am currently a Southwest Priority cardholder, but I am uncertain whether this card will still be worth the higher fee ($229) and without the benefits of the annual $75 travel credit and the 4 free upgraded boardings per year.

In the before times, I continually rebooked our flights as prices dropped and earned non-expiring travel credits. We also usually purchased Early Bird check-in, (after using up our 4 free upgraded boardings). Easy…

Now, I am thinking that with the Priority card, I can book a basic fare, get 1 free baggage allowance for each of us, and still get preferred seat selection at the time of booking. On the downside, if prices go down, and I rebook the flights at a basic fare, my travel credits will expire in 6 months. (Under the Choice fare, I would get 12 months.) Any other pitfalls with booking the basic fare + the Priority card?

All 4 of us have non-expiring travel credits (which I would have used on these flights under the old rules). But I am thinking that I should not touch these on flights that I might cancel and rebook, because the resulting new travel credits will then have an expiration date.

Also, what happens to my preferred seat selection if I rebook the flights at a cheaper price?

Sorry for the ramble, but I would like some confirmation that my assumptions are correct. Also, I need some advice from those of you that book with cash and have played the cancel and rebook game in the past. Have you booked with Southwest under the new rules? Finally, do you think the Priority card is still worth it? (@JJT , care to weigh in?)

Thanks for your help!

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Sounds like you have a good handle on things as I understand them now.

When it comes to “value” - rather than knowing the hard $ we used to have with the annual travel credit + the upgraded boardings, I think we have to place some sort of soft $ value on the ability to choose Preferred seats at booking, plus maybe the value of potential extra leg room seats at 48 hours out. (I am dubious there will be a ton of extra legroom seats available on most flights as one nears the date, but only time will tell.)

Even though I’m an obvious expense optimizer, mentally I think there’s value to not worrying about seat selection costs, so I’m thinking the annual fee is fine for us.

In reality, SW is charging stoopid prices for those Preferred seats in many cases - I would never pay those amounts, but I’d have to think they are still worth something to me. Maybe something like $10/seat/flight?

If that value is indeed reasonable, for us each trip gains 4 seats x $10 x RT = $80 on a non-stop flight trip (You’d have to pay the Preferred seat fee on each leg of a multiple stop flight!)

That adds up quickly.

When it comes to rebooking when prices change - in a normal scenario, I think if I were paying cash for flights, I am very likely not booking Basic anymore because of the credit limitations.

(Since I use SW points for all my flights I buy Basic all the time.)

BUT - worrying about travel credit expiration might be considered a moot point since there is a hack to that now that appears to be working. I saw it mentioned in a FB group awhile back, then we had at least 1 Liner use the tactic to turn an expiring SW credit into a non-expiring. I outlined that info in my CC thread here.

The TL;DR on the tactic:

As for what happens to preferred seat selection on a rebook - I have not read any reports on how quickly Preferred seats go back into inventory. I have been meaning to book some test flights with points, select seats, then cancel and see if those seats become available immediately or not. Maybe that should be my lunch time project today. :slight_smile:

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Oh, I also meant to say - since free bags went south (and west), to me it is a no-brainer that anyone who plans to fly SW more than randomly should have at least one of their credit cards because one flight with bag charges could end up far more than the cheapest annual credit card fee.

Since the cheapest SW card is $99/year - If you agree with me and you also intend to have a SW CC to get the free bags perk, then I’d say the decision to choose the higher fee Priority at $229/year should be thought of as not costing that whole amount but as the difference in annual fee vs the lower cost card.

So, in reality, choosing the Priority would cost you $229 - $99 = $130/year, so will take a shorter of amount of Preferred seats to recoup.

PLUS, if you ACT NOW :wink: remember that the priority will get you an additional 3,500 SW rewards bonus annually, which themselves are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $63, so you could also mentally deduct that value from the annual fee difference and say the Priority is net costing you $67.

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Thank you for your always-thorough analysis!

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BTW: I just ran my test of Preferred seat inventory when rebooking.

Looks like when you cancel the seats go right back into inventory immediately. :slight_smile:

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Yay!

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One other thing I’ve been doing lately is booking my SWA flights as two one way flights rather than a round trip. Since I’m booking basic fares this allows me to cancel and rebook for a savings in the scenario when the trip there decreases in price but the return trip increases (or vice versa)

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I always book one way flights. So much easier to make changes.

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Hmm, I think whenever I used to do the rebook thing, I was able to just rebook one leg of the round-trip flight? Does anyone else remember this? Maybe you can no longer do this?

ETA: I never actually canceled and rebooked I don’t think. Just followed the prompts to change my flight and reselected the same flight at the lower price? My memory is foggy at the moment…

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Yes. You change the flight one leg at a time now. But at one point, this was not the case. The whole flight had to be modified and you only got back if there was an overall difference. At least that is what I recall from many years back.
This is why I have always booked separate. But recently, to use a discount code that could only be used once, I booked round trip. I was able to modify the departure flight (for a different time). I owed a few points but not many. The arrival flight was substantially more so I know it wasn’t the overall difference.

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In the Southwest before time this is also how I did it and always booked round trips for ease. Now, to my understanding, basic fares are not modifiable, only cancellable for a flight credit/point refund. So if I book a round trip basic fare and later the price of my return leg drops by 20$ but the price of my going leg increases by 20$, I cannot take advantage of then $20 decrease in the return leg fare because, not being able to modify, I would have to cancel the full round trip booking and rebook at the higher going fare making it a wash.

On the other hand, if I book it as two one way tickets I can just cancel and rebook the leg that has dropped in price.

FWIW, I just started booking with SWA again for the first time since the major changes last year so it is entirely possible that I’m misunderstanding something and making it overly complicated :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think this is the way to go 99.5% of the time these days - one way bookings takes all of the possible hassles out of the equation.

The only time I can think of an advantage to book a RT on Southwest is if you want to maximize a one time use code as @drvillarejos did.

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Hijacking this excellent thread to mention that we have a Liners in the World - April 2026 group thread in La Cava. :grin:

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I have a June trip and am waiting. Well, watching…..and waiting.

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Wanted to post a little note on Southwest somewhere..regarding them adding pistachio snacks in extra legroom section. My two DDs are allergic to pistachios and I had upgraded us to extra legroom on a flight coming up in April. I called last night to ask for a refund on the upgrades and to move back out of extra legroom. The first agent I got said they could only refund to travel funds, when I asked again for a refund she left for a moment to consult a higher up and then came back and said to submit a request online. I used HUCA and the second agent had no problem giving us a refund back to my card for the upgrades.

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what is HUCA

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Hang up call again

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This was distributed to the whole front section of the plane on my last trip and also offered to some of the back of the plane (at least the 3 rows behind us and we were in the exit row seats).

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Ugh.

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They weren’t extra leg room, 1000% I explained to DH what the issue was (he was excited for the pistachios). After thought, he couldn’t understand why they were even serving them. We both made a point to ask for the Maui bread sticks (they knew what I was talking about).

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