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Southwest has extended their schedule all the way through March 6, so you can start booking your late winter travel now. Keep reading to learn why and how to save even more money on your flights.
Best Time To Book
Whenever I have travel coming up, I book as soon as possible to lock in the lowest fare. I’ve found through booking many flights that even though I check and check again during every sale, my flight has not ever gone lower than it was when the flight schedule came out, at least for many routes. There are some routes that will go on sale, but for the most part, you’re going to find the lowest possible fare by booking as early as you can.
Flexibility To Lower Your Rate
Once you have the ticket booked, you can keep checking your flight to see if it has dropped. This is especially possible with Southwest because you can change your ticket up until 10 minutes before your flight. No joke! If you book with points like I do, those are deposited straight back into your Rapid Rewards account. If you book with cash, you can get a refund (on refundable fares) or a voucher to use up to a year from your booking date. I use these vouchers all the time to rebook. Basically, it’s just your confirmation number, and it’s attached to your specific ticket, so you can’t use it for anyone else.
Booking Tips
One way I maximize my potential savings with Southwest is to book the cheapest flight on the day I want to fly. Later, I can jockey for a better time during a sale. Another thing I do is to only book one way tickets. That way, if I do have to change a flight due to a drop in price or to jockey for a better time, I have to rebook only one segment. You may not want to rebook the other segment of your trip, so that gives you some flexibility. Plus, I’ve flown Southwest on one segment and American on the other, just to save some money or points. I wouldn’t have that flexibility if I had booked a round trip. Check out this post for more tips on flying Southwest.
No Air Travel for Us
We don’t have any air travel coming up, so I won’t be looking at flights during this schedule release. When the next schedule comes up, though, we will be booking Disneyland for Spring Break!
