Advice for purchase of Southwest plane tix? Buy now or wait?

Asked by kevbo (25675

) May 19th, 2010 from iPhone

I’m looking at Vegas flights (from ABQ) in Oct for 4. Currently, $109 is the cheapest, which is obviously a decent deal by any standard, but the last flight tickets I bought included $36 tickets. Multiply that difference by 4 and it’s significant. Should I buy now or wait until I’m 3 months out (say) in the event there’s a sweet special in the meantime? Will Southwest let me swap fares if a better deal comes along?

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5 Answers

With Southwest, buy now. Wait, I didn’t think you could even buy that far in advance.
With Southwest you can cancel a ticket, get a credit for future flights, then buy a cheaper ticket if you find one.

perspicacious (10987

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They are accepting reservations through Nov 5 now, but I doubt you will find a better price at that time of year. The prices only go down during the off-season.

YARNLADY (46619

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Thanks. Went ahead and bought.

kevbo (25675

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@perspicacious you generally don’t even need to cancel. Just go to the website, select “change itenerary”, and rebook your flight. You can even rebook to the exact same flight you already booked. The money is credited back to you as Ticketless Travel Funds that you can use on a future flight.

The only time you should need to cancel is if 1) you want to change the passenger name, 2) the new fare that comes out is via their DING! application, because that one you can’t rebook using “Change Itenerary”

MrItty (17416

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