Originally Posted by
ftnoob
Victor, I've been having that problem of "being shown a low fare on the calendar that you can't find when its time to book" problem quite a bit: beginning at least back in December I've been seeing real bad Southwest Shortcut™ “errors,” especially on Mid-Atlantic—Florida routes. Today I wanted to book a family emergency flight and ran into the problem again. Here are some examples:
Code:
Route Date SS Actual Diff
FLL-BWI March 24 $72 $168 $96
FLL-BWI March 27 $59 $119 $60
FLL-PHL March 27 $89 $139 $50
As I did once before when I was having this problem I phoned the department formerly known as reservations hoping they could tell me which unpublished connection had the bargain fare. Once again I was disappointed. As Victor explained in the
full version of his post quoted above, with award tickets it should usually work to phone an RSA if the calendar shows availability but the flight detail page does not. With fares it is not that simple; there's a high probability that the secret lowest fare is a web-only fare, so the RSA won't be able to see it. You can ask for a list of all the flights shown on the RSA's system to find out which routings are unpublished. (That is partially how I discovered the
weird situation with flights that allegedly operate just one or two weekdays per week, but in fact operate five or more days per week.) Due to the
almost (waiting to hear back from somebody about something) solved problem of the
condensed fare bucket display you are unlikely to be able to get the low fare by booking the unpublished routing online as an A-B-C itinerary. So Southwest Shortcut™ is showing fares that are currently impossible for anyone to book, absent
curb's special skills (or pending release of my
almost finished workaround).
ftnoob -
In these cases the CS&S Reps should be able to escalate your call and get you that fare on the unpublished routing. If you are told that they cannot book it for you due to it being web only, ask to speak to a CCR (or supervisor) - it will take a little more time, but you should be able to get that fare.