richee

We go out to Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend every year for almost 2 decades now. For the last 10 years+, we use WN award tickets, departing Friday late afternoon, returning Monday morning. Even with the switch to the Standard/Freedom Award tiers, we never have had any trouble getting Standard Award seats for the flights we want if we book the tickets when the ticketing window opens up for that weekend.

When I tried last week, as far as I can tell - there are absolutely NO Standard Award seats on EVERY flight leaving Las Vegas on Monday February 7th, the day after Super Bowl! Very disappointing!

atLAS, aLAS

It is interesting how WN manages the RR capacity here. All flights originating from LAS are blocked, yet a spot check from SJC on the same date shows all non-stops available for lower awards to LAX, SEA, PHX. I would guess that the Monday morning SJC flights are all high-yield routes for WN, yet they don't block them out. Flights out of LAS the day after Super Bowl is high-yield as well, but it is high-yield leisure traffic. Possibly WN has some program where they look at historical redemptions and attempt to identify how much revenue was displaced on each route. And, because most people don't use their awards on business travel, the SJC seats are all available, even though historically those Monday morning flights go off full, with a high percentage paying full Y.

There is a question at the bottom of the ticket booking form if the travel is leisure or business. I always ignore that, but maybe they use that info to manage RR capacity as well.

Incidentally, I picked my FlyerTalk handle on a day where I was experiencing frustration using my miles as a LAS-based flyer.

mgirdley

I've been told that SB weekend is the biggest time each year in Vegas. Can't blame them for restricting supply of standard awards.

richee

SB is definitely one of the biggest weekends in Vegas.

But "disappointment" is always relative to "expectations". It's been one of the biggest weekends for quite a long time. They never restricted standard award flights out of LAS until this year, so disappointing that they finally did (though completely understandable).

Interesting, though, that they made the entire Monday after Super Bowl a blackout day for flights originating from LAS. I'm guessing, though, at some point in the future, standard award seats will start opening up for that day.

expert7700

since it's not an official black out date for freedom awards, some flights will open. It's just a matter of waiting them out... sometimes they don't reopen until a week before travelling.

I would book the award fight for the next day and keep checking back. Or book a paid flight as backup/insurance.

One of my best flight experiences was a 4.5hr flight from LAS cross country superbowl sunday, at about 4pm pacific time. 11 people on the flight. McCarran airport was a ghost town. Superbowl updates from the captain every half hour or so (could have been a good or a bad thing as folks were either not sports fans or wanted the whole game on their Tivo's and not have the outcome spoiled).

formeraa

RR availability are based on "expected" bookings. If they are expecting to be full out of LAS on 2/7, then there won't be any RR availability. As one of the previous posters said, RR availability will show up on some flights with fewer bookings than expected.

BBToast

1st weekend of March Madness has been blackout for the Sunday return from Vegas to SDF the last two years that I have traveled from there. We have no problem on the wednesday (before MM) from SDF to LAS, but the return on Sunday is blacked out. I would have figured that SB would have already been that way too!

1st year we returned on Saturday (no blackout); last year we returned Sunday paying for the 1 way which I think was around 200 bucks~.

richee

Most flights on Monday February 7 after Super Bowl Sunday seem to have Standard Award Availability.

returnoftheyeti

Why do you guys complain about this so much? Really? Of course Vegas is blacked out the day after Super Bowl.

I fly for work, all the time, all shot haul. I get to keep my Reward Credits. I get free flights. I use them to go where I want. Usually long haul. But sometimes for short haul. I am in San Francisco, and I like to go to Vegas on the weekends. If I plan in advance, its usually cheap. If I dont, its ~$200 one way. I have called on Friday and used a RR ticket to go to LAS the same day. I am looking 2 months in advance and cant go to DTW for free. But I am not whining about it. Its FREE. If I offer to give you a car, just an average car like a Prius, but you cant drive it on Tuesdays, or between 6am and 11am on Saturdays, are you going to complain? Is a Free car. You can do whatever you want with it, minus those restrictions. You can even sell or give away your free car. Whoever you give or sell it to cant drive it in the restricted times, but they get a car, and you get the cash.

This applies to me even more. I dont pay for my tickets, and I get paid to travel. Its FREE. Its a REWARD. So you cant use it on one of the busiest days of the year. Of course you cant.

Do you go onto hotel websites and complain that rooms are more expensive on the day you want to be there? If you choose to travel on busy days, guess what? Its gonna be busy, and more expensive.

Why do you all feel so entitled to have "the exact flight you want" available. It even sounds like there are freedom awards available. So you can get a free flight out of this, or, if you look at it a different way, you can fly round trip for half price. ~$200 for a round trip flight to vegas on the busiest day of the year is not a bad deal by any stretch of the imagination

richee

Super Bowl in Las Vegas did not suddenly beome popular this year. And Southwest did not all of a sudden learn about capacity control. The main point of the initial post was - despite the heavy load factor on Monday after Super Bowl, it was never a defacto Blackout date, and all flights were pretty much wide open for Standard awards in prior years for the day after Super Bowl. For whatever reason, they decided to make it a de facto Blackout Date when they first opened the schedule.

Now, over 3 and half months before the actual date, pretty much all flights were made available for Standard Awards. As long as they have made almost all flights available for that day every single year in the past, and have again made them available this year, it is not unreasonable to have a certain level of expectation they will be available next year. But I know now from this year, that they may not necessarily be immediately available when the schedule opens. Having expectations, (and feeling disappointed when they're not met) however, is a vastly different thing from entitlement.

My initial post was basically:
1. Standard awards have been available for Monday after Super Bowl all prior years.
2. When schedule was open up, Monday after Super Bowl was essentially a black out date.
3. That was disappointing.

I simply bought tickets for that Monday instead of using awards. And I appreciate Southwest's policy that let's me apply those funds to other flights if awards seats became available, as they have, I never stated they MUST have standard award seats for that day.

I fail to see how your rant is even remotely relevant to this situation. Your statement "So you cant use it on one of the busiest days of the year. Of course you cant." was not true for prior Super Bowls and is not true again for the coming Super Bowl.

jrpaguia

All true and I won't dispute any of your points. But try not to picture a dark lair in Dallas where a bunch of greedy gnomes are gleefully blacking out key dates that used to be available.

Their web interface is schlocky and irritating but WN has very good yield management/optimization software and I'm sure it learns to tune itself based on past performance, i.e., if the software sees that it left money on the table by making awards available for SB Sunday too soon, then it makes sense that it makes them unavailable this year.

Nevada1K

I randomly checked fares to/from Vegas for LAX, SFO, DEN and BWI for the period around Super Bowl weekend. I need to note that currently all of those markets have WGA fares available for several flights at varying fares during this period.

The current Anytime Fare between LAX/LAS is $151. Between February 3-5, the anytime fare LAX-LAS increases to $211. Similarly, LAS-LAX is also $211 on February 7 and 8. I randomly checked SFO, DEN and BWI. Found similar results, the anytime fare is also increased by $60 on those dates.

Just for laughs (?), I checked BWI-DAL on 2/1: the Anytime fare is $395. On 2/4, the Anytime fare is a whopping $599.

Ouch!

I don't recall such increases in prior years — certainly not between LAX/LAS — for Super Bowl weekend.

nsx

Fares that high certainly look like peak date surcharges.