I've had some time to think about how to deal with the new restrictions on Basic. I've concluded that the Southwest or Elliott accountant that came up with this did a really good job to minmax against the customers just like we used to minmax the airlines 10+ years ago. This is payback for letting us change $29 tickets for free systemwide due to schedule changes a few years ago.

The biggest problem is actually the 6 month expiration of credits. I remember the old days when I would refuse to mix new funds with credits expiring in less than a month and let the funds expire. I always refare to get the credits when fares drop, but the refare credits are going to be hard to use with the short 6 month expiration policy on Basic. Don't forget all airlines keep their fares jacked up almost all the time. The true fare sales on Southwest are very infrequent especially if it's not a Tuesday or Wednesday flight. So the ability to cancel Basic for credits isn't as good as I originally thought it was going to be. There is a significant spoilage factor here. When you try desperately to spend the Basic credits before expiration, most likely it will be on a jacked up fare because there is no time left to wait for a sale and still meet the 21 day advance purchase requirement. The spoilage factor is effectively going to wipe out the fare difference between Basic and WGA+. Another way to think of this is to value the credits from a refare or cancellation. The shorter the time remaining, the lesser the value of the credit if you were to sell it to someone else in a theoretical marketplace. The funds from Basic cancellations and refare is like a "free" close-in call option and taking a 50+% loss because the underlying stock didn't go up enough before expiration. The house always wins.

On WGA+, the 4x delta in points earning (8x for ALP) and sometimes the SDC can be used to partially cushion the blow of paying extra. The free SDC provides a quality of life bonus to choose your preferred schedule despite the reduced frequency of intra-CA flights.