We don’t fly all that often but, when we do, it’s usually on Southwest. Like any airline, there are good and not-so-good things about Southwest. One of the good things is how easy they make it to change your flight if you need to without charging you anything (other than perhaps the difference in the fares if you what you are changing to is higher). In the past we’ve used this to change the date/time of a return flight. While I was aware that if the fares on your already booked flight went down there was a way to book at the new, lower fare, I’d (lazily) never taken the time to look into how to do it.
So when I came across this post that gives you step-by-step directions I figured I at least needed to check it out. We have a trip booked on Southwest for September (our group of high school friends is getting together for a few days in Yachats, Oregon). So today I logged in and followed the instructions in that post and rebooked our flights for the exact same days and times, but with a savings of over 7,600 points (we had originally booked the flights with points). While the value of points varies somewhat, that amount of points is usually worth between $100 and $115. Not bad for five minutes of effort. (If you think of it as an hourly wage, that’s at least $1,200/hour, which is just slightly more than I made as a high school teacher.)
So if you fly Southwest and book travel in advance, it’s probably worth checking in a few times before your trip (set a couple of reminders on your calendar) to see if fares have dropped (especially if you get a notice from Southwest indicating a “sale”, as that may – or may not – affect the prices on your flight). Part of the reason I had never investigated it prior to this was that I assumed it would be a lot of hassle and a lot of hoops to jump through. Turns out it’s really, really easy (again, see the step-by-step direction in the post), so I encourage you to give it a try.
Fisch Financial 