Southwest Rapid Rewards - RR Availability Rocks!

I know that many have complained about the restrictions and lack of availability for Rapid Rewards.

A family emergency requires my daughter in law to fly from Phoenix to Kansas City tomorrow. The fare cost is $366 each way, but standard reward seats are available on three of the six flights that have seats for sale.

Total cost - $5.00 for security charges.

Imagine the cost and fees had I tried to use my hard earned award mileage to get a "free" reward flight on another carrier.

Thank you Southwest, your program is still the best!

Close-in award availability is very good in my experience, and the lack of booking fees for booking within 21/14/7 days is huge. I've been looking to use my piles of DL miles and while close-in award availability is very good on them too right now for some places I'd like to go, the $75/ticket close-in booking fee is very disheartening.

Just burnt 100,000 miles to attend a family furneral, flying on UA to a non-WN destination (BTV). $75 close in ticketing fee x 2 = $150.00. The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that I was able to get Saver First tickets (for 50,000 per person) rather than burning the same 50,000 miles per person on anytime coach seata.

OP - glad to hear the program worked for you. My perception is much of the angst regarding availability was for holidays and/or travel out in advance. Just burnt 100,000 miles to attend a family furneral, flying on UA to a non-WN destination (BTV). $75 close in ticketing fee x 2 = $150.00. The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that I was able to get Saver First tickets (for 50,000 per person) rather than burning the same 50,000 miles per person on anytime coach seata.

Sorry for a bit of a thread hijack - I thought 1K is immune from those fees?

OP: my perception of WN's basic award availability - not the awards where you pay double the price - is that there are far fewer award seats available now than in years past. A few days ago I was looking for a single award seat to go from Seattle to my city east of the Mississippi, WN's award seat finder tool indicated that not one basic award seat was available for well over 7 consecutive days. Until now I was used to this on other airlines but not on WN.

OP: my perception of WN's basic award availability - not the awards where you pay double the price - is that there are far fewer award seats available now than in years past. A few days ago I was looking for a single award seat to go from Seattle to my city east of the Mississippi, WN's award seat finder tool indicated that not one basic award seat was available for well over 7 consecutive days. Until now I was used to this on other airlines but not on WN.

I have booked reward tix upon the window opening successfully for BDL -LAS R/T over the past year in October, December (2 trips), February, March, May, June, and upcoming for July, September, October & November. In addition, I had booked two weeks in a row R/T in August (since canceled) weeks after the window opened. IMHO, availability is pretty good.