On Tuesday August 11, 2015 (this morning), Southwest extended the booking horizon through April 11, 2016. The previous last bookable date had been March 8, 2016. If you had previously booked only an outbound flight for a Spring Break trip, you can start exploring return options.
According to the soutwest.com
travel tools page the next schedule extension should happen on September 29, 2015 (subject to change).
If you have more than one flight under a single "Trip Name," be extremely careful when you go to change or cancel one reservation. With the
new version of the web site, clicking on any PNR always takes you to the details page for the
*first* flight of a group. If you don't notice the small text that reads "Flight #1 of [n]", you could end up changing or canceling the wrong flight!
If you haven't poked around the site to explore fares in a long time, you might be surprised how low non-sale fares can be on some routes. MDW to/from PHL, DEN, and AUS were all seen at $50 (OW) for quite a few weeks about a month ago. (In some cases the lowest fares have been available only on the first and last flights of the day, so be sure to click from the calendar to the details page if you are interested in a specific date. The fare difference to the "next best" fare can be quite dramatic.) In the right circumstances extreme savings can be had by booking a connecting flight as two separate PNRs. Don't forget the
100% penalty rule for no-shows, however. The multiple PNR trick is best utilized on points bookings.
If you still need to check for Standard Awards availability in an account with no unused Awards, you'll need to remember to use
this link, because the
latest face lift on the web site removed the link for Award availability searches.