Sheryl

Southwest has announced a widespread fare sale that is likely being matched by the majors. Note the different travel periods for each set of fares.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001214/tx_southwe.html

HornDawg

Sheryl,

I especially like the $60 R/T fares (plus taxes, etc.) in the midwestern cities.

Booking on Southwest's Web site gives you four credits per round trip. So for booking and completing 25 round trips as a Rapid Rewards member, you can qualify for a one-year companion pass--meaning for any trips you take on Southwest in the succeeding 12 months, a companion can travel with you for free. Plus, you get a free R/T ticket for every 16 credits, meaning an accumulation of 100 credits via 25 round trips would get you six free R/T tickets in addition to the free companion pass.

All this for as little as $1,500 plus airport taxes and such. I'd like to look closely at the schedules for the midwestern cities that Southwest includes in this deal and see how many days it would take to complete 25 round trips. In looking at St. Louis-Kansas City, I think the best you can do is maybe four round trips a day, meaning you'd have to spend about six days traveling to get the required trips in. (And at these fares, you'd have to do that between 1/3 and 2/15.) I'd like to think there might be a city pair that would enable you to do a little better than six days.

Anyway, it'd be fun to try...

HornDawg

Oops. Scrap what I said about taking multiple round-trips between an airport pair (like KC-St. Louis) on a single day to try to accumulate lots of credits. An overnight stay is required to qualify for these $60 R/T fares.

Bummer...

Sheryl

Wait a minute. Not so sure you can't do that. Last I checked, back-to-backs do not violate Southwest's fare rules. So double check to make sure, but I think you can do what you proposed, you would just need to be careful in how you do the ticketing. Would be cinch since all you have to do is walk up to the counter with your driver's license and Rapid Rewards card, and not show anything else. Seriously, check into it. Southwest's website has all their Contract of Carriage info. on it, or you could even call Reservations and ask them.

[This message has been edited by Sheryl (edited 12-14-2000).]

HornDawg

Sheryl,

I'm sure I should know this, but what's a back-to-back? (I just happened across FlyerTalk yesterday, so I'm a neophyte in the mileage-run world. And if you're the Sheryl from the Priceline/Expedia bidding message board, I just happened across that site a couple of weeks ago--great info!)

Sheryl

Same Sheryl.

When an airline requires an overnight stay (or more often a Saturday night stay) in order to qualify for a discounted fare, a way to work around that is to buy two separate roundtrip tickets as follows:

Ticket 1:
1/1/00 IAH-EWR
1/8/00 EWR-IAH

Ticket 2:
1/2/00 EWR-IAH
1/9/00 IAH-IAH

This way you qualify for two fares in the $200-$300 range. Use only the outbound portion of each and throw away both returns. If you just need to go to New York one day and return the next, it'll cost you nearly $2,000. So ~$500 vs. $2,000. It's called back-to-back ticketing and it violates fare rules. In other words, you can't fly the trips out of order. If you're caught, your tickets are cancelled and you jeopardize your FF account (they reserve the right to cancel it).

motnot

I think all the fares on sale are for after the New Year, so these would be mileage runs for 2001.