I understand that the way to get the best price is to book the minute the flights open for Southwest. How do people learn the flight dates and times in advance? I can’t see a rhyme or reason to the BOS-MCO schedule at the moment. In fact, over the next few months I’ve only found a few non-stop flights here and there.
I’m hoping to fly 10/19-10/26 so those flights probably won’t open until April. I need to book my DVC on 3/19 so I need to have an idea of the flight schedule/prices before I book so that I can adjust my hotel dates if needed. I assume flying on 10/19 (Sat) might be too expensive.
I don’t know if you’re close enough, but you may also want to consider PVD, they tend to have more non-stop flights.
Normally I book a longer stay than I plan to actually stay, then adjust once I book flights. But not sure I’d that would work for you with DVC. Otherwise you may want to look at another airline like JetBlue… There’s no real way to get around SW’s wonky and ever changing schedule.
For both my December and my June trips, I didn’t have the Southwest schedule or school calendar in advance of the timeline needed to book DVC. I ended up booking the DVC and adding one day in June and two days in December additional to the DVC booking. So I went with the minimum I knew I wanted and then added once the other info became clear. Not sure it helps, but that was my strategy at least.
Are you tied to Southwest, because I’m pretty sure Spirit, Jetblue, and Delta all fly direct from BOS to MCO. A quick google flights search is showing Delta non-stop roundtrip flights for your specific dates for $243.
Thank you! This tool is at least more helpful than searching day by day. I’m looking through May and June to maybe get an idea of how October will shuffle out. Still doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for the non-stops. Nothing like one every Saturday or anything.
You are so right! We gotta list this on all the chats/forum posts where people ask the pros and cons!
I have heard lots of good things about Providence and Southwest so I may take a look but this time I will be going with DS4 and DS1 so would like to stay a little closer to home. We’re about 15 miles NW of Boston. We might try MHT because parking there will be cheaper and that’s only 45 minutes away.
I will definitely consider this strategy! I may be working with studio and my own point availability so I think I need to be more flexible on DVC and then just probably pay a premium for flights.
Well we JUST opened the Southwest credit card for 60,000 free miles plus we are hoping to have the companion pass. I probably should have done more research about direct flights first! The claim that they technically fly direct, and they do, but not very often apparently! Otherwise I think we have done JetBlue in the past.
Oh, well I can’t argue with the companion pass. I saw that recent offer and was tempted to jump on that too! In any case, I’m sure the flight schedule will open up. Worse case you connect thru BWI…
Tangent… we got the card like 2 weeks before this recent offer of a guaranteed companion pass! My husband was super frustrated but our offer came with 60k points which is 30k more and we will have the companion pass for 2019 and 2020 so I’m telling myself we came out ahead.
Not sure how far North you are, but we often fly JetBlue out of Worcester as well. We’re typically back and forth between JetBlue ORH and Southwest PVD or BDL.
My DD is flying from New York to Orlando in September to join me at WDW. We are from the UK and I would really appreciate some guidance on which airlines offer the best price combined with flexibility. She is unsure of exactly when she will fly to Orlando but I was thinking of booking the flight now, so that the price is fixed. JetBlue (Blue Flex) is available for about £159/US$204. Does this sound good or should I wait for Southwest?
lol, isn’t that the way the world works? I thought you were referring to that guaranteed companion pass as part of the signup bonus. Well it wont take much to get to the companion pass from 60K. just pay off your disney trip and you’ll almost be there
I just did a cursory search for you, and I do see one direct flight out of LGA to MCO that is running currently. But no guarantee that it will still be running in Sept. Southwest is awesome in regards to changes, because you can make free changes to your flights. You only pay the difference in fare, if there is a difference.
But that’s kind of what I was thinking about Southwest out of NYC. I do a fair amount of travel up and down the coast between DC/NYC/Boston and never fly Southwest to NYC because they don’t seem to offer many flights there. Southwest tends to fly out of “secondary” airports, not out of major hubs.
You might be best taking that JetBlue flight. They have a big presence out of NYC, so if god forbid her flight is cancelled/delayed/changed, there’s lots of other planes and flights available to rebook on.
