This is the big one, covering Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Expect the new dates to show up between 5:30 AM and 6:15 AM Central Time Monday, May 6. This extension continues the change of AirTran cities and routes to Southwest branding.
If you need to book at the earliest possible instant, you'll need to glue yourself to your computer and constantly refresh the flight search page. To avoid any nasty Master Session Timeout surprises, you should also plan to delete southwest.com cookies every 10 minutes or so. Note: it is best not to log in first! You may encounter booking problems and inconsistent behavior due to website overload. Be aware that the schedule opening may not activate on all Southwest's servers at the same time. Reloading the web page may put you on a different server, opening or perhaps even closing the schedule extension. Patience is required.
In some past schedule extensions, standard award seats did not become available immediately. Please post your results on finding any award seats or not finding any for any routes or dates. As soon as one person posts finding an award seat during the new dates, we will know that at least some award inventory has been loaded.
For information on future schedule extensions, see the travel tools page at
www.southwest.com/html/travel-tools/index.html
In other news:
1. AirTran and Southwest are now fully integrated for booking combined itineraries. Award travel redeemable on both airlines under the rules for whichever website you use to make the booking. Shared itineraries booked on southwest.com are eligible for Companion Pass travel. This includes trips to San Juan!
2. The no-show fee Southwest told us to expect is here. For WannaGetAway and Ding fares booked on or after May 10, 2013 for travel dates on or after September 13, 2013, you will lose the entire fare if you fail to cancel before the scheduled departure time and you don't get to the gate in time to invoke the flat-tire rule (up to 2 hours after scheduled departure). FT'ers seem to find the new policy both fair and overdue:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...-may-10-a.html
3. Early Bird Check In increased to $12.50 on February 22. WiFi increased to $8 on February 1.
4. The 143-seat Evolve interior is now being installed on the 737-300's, which are very slightly shorter than the 737-700's. This makes for an even tighter fit:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...l#post20436934
In the department of misery loves company, Alaska Airlines is now adding a row of seats:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...r-outlets.html
5. Monster drinks were dropped on April 1 (no joke). Vitamin water was added on May 1. The surprising good news is that
Southwest has decided to accept your dated drink coupons (both Business Select and rainbow coupons) for this new drink option:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...l#post20683046
Print the press release from
http://swamedia.com/releases/southwe...ater-r-onboard and take it with you on the flight in case the flight attendant has not gotten the word.
6. The impressive new terminal at Dallas Love Field is opened on April 16:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...inal-open.html
7. Last and most important is an upgrade to FlyerTalk. Members with 90 posts and 90 days of membership can now create and edit per-thread Wikiposts. If you've surfed slickdeals.net or fatwallet.com, you have seen these. In a wikipost, our members attempt to collect the most pertinent information in the thread and summarize it at the top of the thread for newly arriving readers.
We are not currently able to report issues within a wiki. Please feel free to correct vandalism or incorrect information yourself. Should you believe a mod should see it, please use the little red triangle, "Alert Moderator", within the first thread post. Should you see a technical issue with wiki posts, please post at
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...l#post20641560
Wiki posts are an important step toward enabling all FT members to maximize their contributions to our fellow members. For everyone who ever wanted to pitch in, this is your chance to shine!