Southwest Airlines has several policies that are different from other airlines. Some of them are divisive, like the open seating policy and the lack of any business class or extra legroom seating. Some are great for everyone, like every passenger getting two free checked bags.
In my opinion, one of Southwest’s best policies is not charging any fees for changing or canceling flights. I’ve used the free cancellations rule to book some backup flights for trips this summer, which, fortunately, I’ve never had to use. However, I used the rule previously to rebook tickets when prices dropped, particularly during Southwest fare sales.
What made this so great was if you were able to reprice a ticket, you’d either get the difference back in miles, or you’d get a travel credit if you booked a revenue ticket. The drawback of the travel credit was that it expired 1 year from when you booked your flight.
Now that Southwest has eliminated the expiration date on travel funds, checking for price drops should be a normal activity, even more so if you booked a flight way in advance.
I use Southwest’s emails about fare sales, like this one I received today, as a reminder to check my pending reservations.
Even if your flight doesn’t fall within the range of the sale, the fare still could have dropped.
All you need to do is follow the process of changing a Southwest flight explained in this post. The only difference is that instead of changing flights, you’ll rebook the same flight at a lower price.
Unfortunately for us, all of our upcoming trips on Southwest are either the same price or have gotten more expensive since we booked them. Hey, you can’t win them all. But it only took me 5 minutes to check and I might have saved over $100 so it was time well spent.
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