People often ask what the value of Standard Awards is. I have a perfect illustration.

I found out yesterday my wife and I have to attend a funeral across the country on Friday.

Yesterday evening I was able to book 3 of the 4 flights on Standard Awards and the remaining one using Airtran A+Biz. The cost is equivalent to 48,000 points. The lowest available fares would have been $1,581 or 145,862 points.

This morning when I checked and discovered some new lower points fares for one of the flights. I could cancel the Airtran Flight and book a different Southwest flight for about 12,500 points. I may do that and save the Airtran credits for future Standard Awards.

I just thought you might be interested.

Sorry for your loss and that is a great example when they are most valuable. A week out and I would bet the farm it would have been a very different story regarding availability.

I wonder if this intentional, by design or just stupidity. I would think the non-obsessive FF would check once or twice in advance then just give up and even let expire. So maybe its by design.

The real question is how many to create from WN points before the AirTran trick goes away Nov 1.

Great example. It all depends on your travel needs and habits. For example, the vast majority of non-rev flights I take are with the family on 'planned' vacations that we need to book 2-3 months in advance, usually with an annual trip over the Christmas holidays. Trying to find three SA seats this far out (and especially during the holidays) is next to impossible, so we always book with points. In fact, we haven't used any SA's in the 3.5 years since RR 2.0 came out and out of the dozens of flights booked with points, only a handful were over the magic 19,200 point mark - and only then just a couple of thousand points over that mark. And many times I was able to refare those tickets well below the 19,200 point threshold.

Both points and SA's offer differing value depending on the type of flexibility you require. For my family, RR 2.0 bookings in points have been a big boon over the 16-credit SA program especially since seats purchased with points aren't limited. With just two Anytime AUS-> HOU round-trips, because of A-List Preferred, I earn $200 worth of WGA travel.

Of course, nothing can beat the days where there were unlimited SA seats and you could always get double credits by booking on-line and there were often additional promos you could stack.

I still mourn the loss of the extra credit for SWABIZ booking. You could manufacture free SAa for very little.

Yes, life was great when Southwest was giving away the store. They kept doing it for more years than I ever expected, but it did need to end.

Edited to add: Southwest's profitability masked the cost of a too-generous FF program. Four $29 tickets to earn an unrestricted transcon round trip? Absurd.

On the other hand, we "earned" those benefits by having to show up very early at the airport and sit on the floor in line for 30 minutes to get a decent seat. Except for the squeezed Evolve seating, the travel experience on Southwest is far better now.

I have a few standard awards that unfortunately are always blacked out for dates/cities I want to travel. I'm curious if I can transfer these to AirTran and covert into credits and then when the conversion takes place on 11/1, those will transfer back into my account as RR points? Frankly the points would be much more valuable and useful to me rather than these awards based on the lack of availability for my desired city pairs & dates.

Thanks!!

Yes, that will work fine.

Can't you convert AirTran credits to RR points right now?

No. Only to RR credits. 16 RR credits generate a Standard Award. 15 credits just sit there until they expire.

Termination of A+ Rewards is a one-time opportunity to convert credits to points. I don't plan to use that, but some people will.

Cool. Thanks.

My current plan is to create as many Standard Awards from Credits as I can, maybe topping off one by converting points to credits then leave a "seed" for a future top off in both my wife's account and my account.

Since I don't generally keep large amounts of credits in my account it should work out for me.

+1 on this thread. I wish WN would keep a way to allow us to continue to create SAs. I see it as a win-win for southwest, because typically they are seats that would have gone out empty anyway...

Unlike some airlines, which continue to have discount buckets for short-haul travel 2-3 days before travel, WN seems to close off the WGA fare buckets intra-CA 7 days before travel... Which means that a last minute trip will cost $550+ RT on Southwest, but $350 on United. SAs were typically the lifesaver in this situation... the RT would have been 50k on points, but 19,200 on a SA...

Bottom line: no one ever redeems their points for AT or BS fares, but sometimes they're the only fares available. SAs close the gap here, letting me pick a plane with availability at about half the cost. Without that options, I would have just taken the UA flight

This is why everyone needs to have a stash of UR, Amex points, SPG points, Avios (especially), etc.

Those insane last-minute short-hauls RTs can become 9k Avios + $11.

IMHO that that deal is too good to will last more than another year or so.

I'm surprised it has lasted this long.