Maybe somebody can put this in the FAQ unless I somehow manage to get to it. In the meantime we can compile in this thread the reasons to book a separate reservation per person per direction of travel.

1. If a better fare becomes available in one direction but the fare increased in the other direction it's easy to use Change Reservation or rebook the half that went down. There's no risk of disturbing the good fare on the other half of your trip.

2. If one seat opens at a discount fare you can grab it for one passenger using Change Reservation or rebooking.

3. Points post after each direction rather than only after your return trip.

4. Smaller ticketless fund amounts make it less likely that you will commingle a large amount of new funds with a small early-expiring ticketless fund amount. That would result in early expiration for all your new funds.

5. If you decide to replace one direction of a paid ticket with a standard award booking, or vice versa, it's much easier to do.

6. If you cancel a multi-person booking the ticketless funds on the record locator are separated into invisible buckets, one for each name. This complication does not arise if you originally gave each person his own reservation. Don't underestimate the hassle of dealing with multiple names on one canceled reservation. It even drives our venerable ftnoob nuts.

7. All of the above allow you to change what you need to change without phoning Southwest. Once a phone agent modifies a reservation, that reservation cannot be further modified online. You are locked into phone call mode. Online, the reservation can only be canceled and reboooked.



The main reason to book a round trip and to put multiple people on a reservation is that you have a discount code whose value multiplies by the number of people in the booking and which requires a round trip purchase. On-line check-in is faster if all passengers are on the same reservation, which can be a one-way reservation for that purpose.