Post all SW questions concerns, etc. here...

[elle101me]

You know that you can go into reservation and change...hope you can fix.

Thanks. I just looked at that and I could get travel funds but I can't use them for EBCI. Now, I have to decide if I want to spend another $150 for EBCI.. I think I'll hold off for a bit.

 

[shoreward]

Thanks. I just looked at that and I could get travel funds but I can't use them for EBCI. Now, I have to decide if I want to spend another $150 for EBCI.. I think I'll hold off for a bit.

Reservations are fully refundable if canceled within 24 hours of booking. Is the lower fare still available?

 

[elle101me]

Reservations are fully refundable if canceled within 24 hours of booking. Is the lower fare still available?

Yes. That you for that info, I didn't realize that! I booked roundtrip and my flight home is sold out. It's the flight down that I messed up on. I'm still thinking about it. It looks like I'll have to call since I can't do it online. That's what I get for booking roundtrip and not 2 one ways.

 

[Realgrumpy]

I could only book one way. My return flight is June 7th. Flights stopped at June 6th. I get to do it all over again in December!

 

[L_MD]

That was more expensive than usual. Booked 4/26 out of PIT, 5/1 back from MCO. I can usually find flights for around $109 but not this time. Plus the first non-stop out of my airport is at 7am when I usually catch one around 5:30-6am.

Which, of course, messes up my arrival day plans. Oh well. I have 6-months to fix my plans up, and I'll check my flights every day to see if they go down a bit. If they do I'll probably purchase EBCI.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

FYI - Southwest extended their schedule this morning for flights through June 6th, 2020.

Here is my usual Historical Southwest Release Dates (for planning purposes) comment:

• NEXT RELEASE: 12/11/19 - travel through August 10th, 2020
• 10/30/19 - travel through June 6th, 2020
• 9/26/19 - travel through April 13th, 2020
• 8/15/19 - travel through March 6th, 2020
• 5/30/19 - travel through January 5th, 2020
• 3/15/19 - travel through November 2nd, 2019
• 1/31/19 - travel through October 1st, 2019
• 11/15/18 - travel through August 5th, 2019
• 9/27/18 - travel through June 8th, 2019
• 8/30/18 - travel through April 7th, 2019
• 6/28/18 - travel through March 6th, 2019
• 5/31/18 - travel through January 6th, 2019
• 3/8/18 - travel through November 3rd, 2018
• 2/15/18 - travel through October 1st, 2018
• 11/2/17 - travel through August 6th, 2018
• 8/28/17 - travel through June 1st, 2018
• 7/27/17 - travel through April 6th, 2018
• 6/22/17 - travel through March 7th, 2018
• 5/18/17 - travel through January 7th, 2018

This chart could be useful to approximate when your travel time may become available for upcoming releases, however they don't always follow the exact same pattern (as you can see above) They appear to be tightening the inventory a bit this year vs. prior year's releases.

RELEASE TIMES:

• The release on 10/30/19 went live at 7:15am.
• The release on 9/26/19 went live at 7:30am.
• The release on 8/15/19 went live at 10:41am.
• The release on 5/30/19 went live at 9:20am.

If you want to search back for this post in the future - just search my name and "release". You could also bookmark this comment on the new DIS somehow (or so I heard).

 

[firstwdw]

Thanks everyone for keeping this updated! I'm all set! Very happy! DH and I are doing an adult only trip from 4/18-4/24 from MHT. First time using our rewards pts. For $ amounts, it would have been $352/person roundtrip--which actually isn't bad for a school vacation week! (It cost us 23,463 pts/person.)

That is very good. We are flying from MHT 4/18-4/25 and paid with points but would have been $410 per person. YIKES! But we are flying at good times. and maybe they'll go down and we can get some points back?! I still need to add on early bird check in.

 

[Geomom]

That is very good. We are flying from MHT 4/18-4/25 and paid with points but would have been $410 per person. YIKES! But we are flying at good times. and maybe they'll go down and we can get some points back?! I still need to add on early bird check in.

Even $410/person isn't bad. We tend to budget $2000-$2400 for the 4 of us, so anything less than that is great. This is the 1 time I'm not doing early bird since it's just the 2 of us. We're already paying for DD15's school trip to Japan that week, so we're trying to do this trip as cheap as possible (using Southwest rewards, our DVC pts, and we currently have annual passes.) We always do early bird when we fly with the kids as they like us near them (even now at 19 and 15.)

 

[Nohal]

Checked flights from PHL on 5/26 around 9:30 this morning and all direct flights to MCO on that date are sold out. How is this possible when they just opened up?

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Checked flights from PHL on 5/26 around 9:30 this morning and all direct flights to MCO on that date are sold out. How is this possible when they just opened up?

I'm actually seeing a 3rd non-stop option available to book for an 8:30pm flight.

Looking at it Monday the 25th is available for all 3 non-stop options. Wednesday the 27th is available for all 3 non-stop options. That said with Monday being Memorial Day it's possible that is impacting the non-stop options.

It also could be SWA is still adjusting things on their end and blocking the availability of booking those 2 non-stop flights for the day after Memorial Day. Given that it's just that day and 2 out of 3 non-stop flights without the other flights that include stops being shown as sold out that might be the more likely case. Purely my opinion though.

 

[shoreward]

Checked flights from PHL on 5/26 around 9:30 this morning and all direct flights to MCO on that date are sold out. How is this possible when they just opened up?

It's around the holiday and many families and groups book at that time. Keep checking, as people change and cancel all the time. Also, sometimes Southwest does not load all seats on release day, for some reason.

 

[Nohal]

It's around the holiday and many families and groups book at that time. Keep checking, as people change and cancel all the time. Also, sometimes Southwest does not load all seats on release day, for some reason.

I'm hoping that the seats were not all loaded for that day. I'll keep checking.

 

[cmarsh31]

Wasn't great...got to school at 7:30 so I missed the first 15 minutes. 2 tickets at $196, 1 at $230, last one at $250. 2 with points, had travel funds too, $270 out of pocket but still need ebci.

 

[Shelly S]

I posted this morning that I got such a great deal on points 4/19 to 4/26. I’m so happy I was booking first thing this morning. The same great non stop flights out of Hartford that I got for only 18602 points pp round trip are now over 52000 pp round trip. I hope those trying for school vacation week were booking early.

 

[focusondisney]

Checked flights from PHL on 5/26 around 9:30 this morning and all direct flights to MCO on that date are sold out. How is this possible when they just opened up?

Is the whole flight sold out, or just the wanna get away fares? This seems to be the game SW plays now...... release a very small number of WGA fares on opening day. They end up showing “sold out” really quickly, like within an hour or 2 of release. There are plenty of seats left, just at the highest rates. At come point, WGA fares reappear. Could be hours, days or weeks. You just have to keep checking.

I have watched this for at least the last year & it happens All. The. Time. This morning I was online since 6 am. I had my flight booked by 7:02. But even then, the fare jumped about $40 as I was entering my gift cards. So instead of the 280 I originally saw, I ended up with $325. One way. My family member who was booking the same flight ended up booked by 7:18 & paid 354. And by 7:45, the WGA fares on many of the flights that day were gone. Right now, only 1 out of 15 flights for our travel day show any WGA fares. 1 out of 15!!

It is crazy, but it‘s the way SW is doing things now. It is annoying for sure.

Edit to add: I was able to see & book the flight just as they were being released. I selected 2 seats at $280. I had problems getting my gift cards to load. I got a message I needed to call to book. Instead, I went back to start over & the fare had jumped to 325. So IMHO, there were only 2 seats at that lowest fare. And they were “taken” by my first attempt to book. No proof, but as I said, I was fully booked by 7:02. I truly don’t think there were that many people booking that particular flight before me.

 

[erc]

That is interesting. I have never tried to book Sunday to Sunday flights before during Boston's April vacation time. I was not going to bother but just keep monitoring the flights as the date got closer but decided to check about 7:45 since I knew the dates were released this morning and panicked when I saw few WGA fares left. Now I wonder if I keep checking if I will see that I could have waited. I guess it will be a good lesson for the next time if that is the case.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Is the whole flight sold out, or just the wanna get away fares? This seems to be the game SW plays now...... release a very small number of WGA fares on opening day. They end up showing “sold out” really quickly, like within an hour or 2 of release. There are plenty of seats left, just at the highest rates. At come point, WGA fares reappear. Could be hours, days or weeks. You just have to keep checking.

I have watched this for at least the last year & it happens All. The. Time. This morning I was online since 6 am. I had my flight booked by 7:02. But even then, the fare jumped about $40 as I was entering my gift cards. So instead of the 280 I originally saw, I ended up with $325. One way. My family member who was booking the same flight ended up booked by 7:18 & paid 354. And by 7:45, the WGA fares on many of the flights that day were gone. Right now, only 1 out of 15 flights for our travel day show any WGA fares. 1 out of 15!!

It is crazy, but it‘s the way SW is doing things now. It is annoying for sure.

Edit to add: I was able to see & book the flight just as they were being released. I selected 2 seats at $280. I had problems getting my gift cards to load. I got a message I needed to call to book. Instead, I went back to start over & the fare had jumped to 325. So IMHO, there were only 2 seats at that lowest fare. And they were “taken” by my first attempt to book. No proof, but as I said, I was fully booked by 7:02. I truly don’t think there were that many people booking that particular flight before me.

Not the poster but it's the whole flight:


Down the list though there is still a non-stop available:


Makes me think SWA hasn't quite loaded it yet or figured out what to do with those flights. Given that the days before and the days after do not show this issue at all,none of the other flight times have issues either on that day or any of the days before it or after it, even with the day being 1 day after Memorial Day. Just my guess of course. I'd keep an eye on the flights personally. Could be MAX8 issues, inspections that the FAA instructed, etc. That would be my hope for the poster that it's just those issues and not a true sold out aspect.

 

[focusondisney]

Not the poster but it's the whole flight:
View attachment 448935

Down the list though there is still a non-stop available:
View attachment 448936

Makes me think SWA hasn't quite loaded it yet or figured out what to do with those flights. Given that the days before and the days after do not show this issue at all,none of the other flight times have issues either on that day or any of the days before it or after it, even with the day being 1 day after Memorial Day. Just my guess of course. I'd keep an eye on the flights personally. Could be MAX8 issues, inspections that the FAA instructed, etc. That would be my hope for the poster that it's just those issues and not a true sold out aspect.

Hmm, never seen the whole flight fully booked this early. But I have 1 other thought..... is it possible a school group is traveling that day & has booked the whole flight? I know it would be unusual, but it could happen. A few years ago, we were at our gate pretty early. The flight before ours hadn’t boarded yet. There was a large group of high schoolers around the gate area. When they called for that flight to begin boarding, the kids started lining up, along with 3 women traveling together. I heard 1 of the chaperones tell the gate agent to let the 3 women board first, because their group had the whole rest of the plane! They all just boarded single file, not worried about boarding positions. I have no idea how it gets booked, but I would imagine it is somehow arranged ahead of time.

Just a thought.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Hmm, never seen the whole flight fully booked this early. But I have 1 other thought..... is it possible a school group is traveling that day & has booked the whole flight? I know it would be unusual, but it could happen. A few years ago, we were at our gate pretty early. The flight before ours hadn’t boarded yet. There was a large group of high schoolers around the gate area. When they called for that flight to begin boarding, the kids started lining up, along with 3 women traveling together. I heard 1 of the chaperones tell the gate agent to let the 3 women board first, because their group had the whole rest of the plane! They all just boarded single file, not worried about boarding positions. I have no idea how it gets booked, but I would imagine it is somehow arranged ahead of time.

Just a thought.

Anything is possible I swear these days with air travel

 

[Nohal]

Hmm, never seen the whole flight fully booked this early. But I have 1 other thought..... is it possible a school group is traveling that day & has booked the whole flight? I know it would be unusual, but it could happen. A few years ago, we were at our gate pretty early. The flight before ours hadn’t boarded yet. There was a large group of high schoolers around the gate area. When they called for that flight to begin boarding, the kids started lining up, along with 3 women traveling together. I heard 1 of the chaperones tell the gate agent to let the 3 women board first, because their group had the whole rest of the plane! They all just boarded single file, not worried about boarding positions. I have no idea how it gets booked, but I would imagine it is somehow arranged ahead of time.

Just a thought.

I'm surprised if it is a school group. Southern schools will be out for the summer and the northern school will only be in school for 2-3 more weeks.

So the non stop flights have now opened up for my date. However the WGA fare still says sold out. I know there is another flight late but I really don't want to pay for a day at Disney only to sleep there.