Apologies for bumping this old thread, but here's an update: I had a real forehead-slapping moment when I realized, too late, that the reason the 7-day advance fares went up so much was that a sale had expired. I used to always check for sale expiration dates when researching fares, but a) I was suffering travel planning burnout and forgot; b) SW frequently extends sales (and had done so one or more times on this particular sale); and c) I almost never look at 7-day advance fares so I am only accustomed to thinking of 14-day and 21-day advance purchase sales.

A couple odd things about this: 1) I had still been seeing the sale fares almost 24 hours after the last-stated sale expiration date, so it would have been confusing even if I had remembered to check whether a sale was in progress; and 2) a couple days later another 7-day advance sale started, but at that point it was about 5 days before my hoped-for travel date. So there was all of about two days out of three-four weeks where I could not make that purchase at the lower price. For that and other reasons I ended up not going.

The experience led me to wonder whether it would be useful to have a sticky thread with a current list of known sales, promotions, and other offers or specials, along with stated expiration dates. The southwest web site doesn't really have a consolidated listing of all active specials.

It would be also be helpful if the aggregate wisdom of the experts could be tapped to come up with a "best guess" as to whether an existing sale is likely to be extended or not. (This suggestion was inspired by the schedule extension date prediction thread.) If that's too difficult, it would at least help if the sticky thread noted the original expiration date of a sale and not just the currently stated expiration date. We can at least rely on the inverse relationship between number of prior extensions and probability of additional extensions to gauge how pressing the current deadline may be. (I realize there are various other risks to being able to purchase a particular fare at a later date.)