I love southwest for everything but this. This nonsense about “we’ll release flights …on this date…at some time,” as they put their pinky to their lip, is friggin annoying.
We all know that the flights are going to be the same as they were last year, and the year before that. Most of us just want to confirm we got them and/or see the price. Just release them ahead of time and just notify us that the schedule might change a bit until this mythical “release date”, it’s not that hard.
I mean, they change AFTER today a lot of the time anyway.
To clarify… driving 14+ hours away isn’t’ a real option - (for me.)
I have done similar drives twice in my life and it makes me physically sick. While I’m not rich, by any means, I can afford to fly to save my body & sanity from the stress of that trek. I don’t want to drive 14+ hours just to have to spend a day or two recovering from the travel.
Plus, I don’t stay in deluxe hotels ever and moderates are a special occasion. So that’s how I “balance out” the cost of airfare.
So it seems like flights are psuedo released. I can change the URL dates and get flights, but I cannot select it via the calendars.
And ugh - they change flight times. They removed the flights I was looking for. May leave the night before/day earlier. Or just take a connecting flight. (leaves earlier, arrives later than initially planned.)
Sorta. Thinking on it, I guess it’ll mean more if I choose round trip on my NEXT flight, actually. This one shouldn’t make much difference.
Anyway, should there be adjustments down the road, round trip vs individual flights does make a difference. It’s sorta convoluted, but if you make adjustments (like when they drop prices) you get a credit toward another flight. However, you get a new “credit” every time you do this and you can only use 2 credits at most toward your next flight.
So for example, you adjust your flights 5 times before your trip, you get 5 credits. Each time you did it, it was a different number.
$5, $1, $10, $22, and $5
At most, you could only use $32 toward your next “round trip”. Since round trip combines flights that those 2 credits are only good for the whole trip. However, if you do individual 1-way trips, you could use $15 on one way, and $27 on the other way.
Although, I thought I recall reading that some airlines will SOMETIMES price round trip tickets so that they charge the same both ways, and use the more expensive ticket as the price of both…so booking two one-way avoids this problem.
I don’t know how frequent that is the case, nor which airlines, though, since you know me and what an expert flyer I am.
These prices are $200+ per person more than what I’ve seen over the last year! 