40% off WGA "Big winter sale" on through Oct 11

The twice a year "Wow sale" is up for the next 72 hours.

-Promo code "BIGDEAL40"
-40% off WGA roundtrip fares, rather than the fixed one way distance based fares of prior similar sales
-Book by end of day Oct 11
-For travel Nov 28-Dec 12, Jan 7-Feb 14
-No Sundays and a handful of market specific restrictions
-It's a promo code, so can't apply it to RR2.0 award travel

So for some higher fare markets it's a good sale if not quite as good as prior Wow sales. In more competitive markets the fares will lower to extremely good (example $72 one way OAK-PHX will lower to around $100 r/t all in.)

Note also that Airtran is running a parallel big sale, too, that is much more like the previous Wow sales ($45 short hauls and up) rather than the percent off deal.

Able to get LAX-SFO for several dates for $79.50 all in.

I have a trip that falls over the end date cutoff (2/14) -- looks like it'll let me book the round trip and take the 40% off the outgoing flight, but then the price on the returning flight is pretty bad.

If I were to do that and subsequently found a lower fare on the returning flight, I suppose there's nothing I could do, right? Obviously, the conventional advice of 'book 2 one-ways' (which I've already done, albeit at 40% more for outgoing) doesn't apply here.

Not a fan of the roundtrip requirement and the use of a coupon will likely limit legacy matching.

The Airtran $45, now including taxes, is very appealing if the markets work.

Pretty lousy sale, I'm seeing almost double the fare compared to last year's October sale. Many blackout days and the RT requirement makes hidden city difficult. Legacies won't have to match this one, their fares are already at this level.

took out the complete holiday season and then some.

i don't consider this sale near as good as some in the past.

Not only is this not as good a sale as we have seen in the past, it is also frustrating to me when these "sales" are structured as coupons and specifically exclude points-based reservations. This effectively devalues our RR points when it costs more than 60 points/dollar to use them. They are basically saying "its $100 if you pay in cash, but its $150 if you pay in points."

EDIT: Nevermind -- just saw the other thread on this point.

Oops! The promotion code entered cannot be validated for one of the following reasons: all fares displayed below are lower than those available with the promo code applied, travel dates entered are invalid for this promotion, travel is on a blackout date, airports selected are invalid for this promotion, the promotion code system is temporarily unavailable, or information is missing to complete this request.

Didn't notice this additional restriction:

Blackout Dates include travel to/from the following airports:
Las Vegas flights Jan. 10 through Jan 14, 2013, Jan. 17 through Jan. 21, 2013, and Jan. 31 through Feb. 14, 2013.

Question on this. I basically always book one-way, so I wonder whether a hidden city route would cause my return trip to be cancelled. Does anyone know for sure?

The rates to MDW are too high; I find more attractive hidden city options (even restricting myself to one faux destination).

I've never heard of that happening. You should be OK.

If you want to do extra work, book a dummy return for your RT. Phone Southwest to cancel only the return portion leaving you that value in ticketless funds. Apply the funds to your next reservation. At the end of booking all your trips you will have a return's worth of ticketless funds left over.

Right, makes sense as a back up. The orphan return would be 40% plus the MDW premium more expensive., so I hope it doesn't come to that.

I dunno what you all are complaining about - this sale is going to save me a couple hundred dollars. Woot! Thanks WN!

So what happens in the event you're able to take one trip of the flight but unable to take the second leg? Do you just not get credited for flying? How does that work. Thanks!

Personally, I'm complaining because despite several trips I need to book, this promotion is not going to save me a couple hundred dollars.

The round-trip provision really hurts me for planning, as I generally buy two WGA one-ways and then fiddle with one leg or the other as the trip firms up (and often end up buying Business Select for one leg as a consequence). I did buy a couple of work trips and saved $80 and $120, but odds are both will have to get changed before I fly so it's not going to matter. I'm basically betting because it's free to bet.

I'm still using up RR1 tickets from the RR1->RR2 conversion, so I'm not particularly interested in the date frame for leisure travel. And with over 120k RR2 points banked up, I'm pretty annoyed that the 40% off isn't on RR2 redemptions. Excluding points from the sale is a very bad move.