ehallison

I don't understand the bolded statement. Southwest is the only airline I fly that has an earlier boarding available for purchase (EBCI or the upgrade at the gate). For his business travel, my husband even factors it in when comparing flight costs. If an Alaska roundtrip costs X, and Southwest costs Y, my husband compares X to Y+30 (although the $30 is not usually the deciding factor, it's something to consider, especially on the lower-cost intra-California flights). I realize it's his choice to pay for that or not...but it's just not true to say other airlines will charge for that choice, and Southwest does not.

ryw

Unfortunately, with the introduction of basic economy fares by legacies,
I don't always find the price comparisons by Google Flights that useful anymore. If flying a legacy I'd like to be able to use the overhead bin, and generally prefer to have a seat assignment. I've found that Google Flights sometimes shows prices for basic economy, other times they show prices for regular economy. It doesn't help that airlines aren't consistent about the buy up fees (e.g. Delta's seems to be based on distance. I've also once compared the same route and found that United had a $25 buy up to regular economy, and Delta had a $10 buy up). So I end up going to each airline's site anyways to compare

Which doesn't necessarily fix the problems with Southwest's own search engine. As others have said, I'd love the ability to search multiple airports. (You'd think that they'd let you, as the autocomplete already groups together "Los Angeles Area Airports", "DC Area Airports", etc). In the past I've booked 2 one way flights between metropolitan areas using different city pairs to get better pricing, but it can be a headache to manually input all those combinations!

exwannabe

WAS (for all DC area airports) and NYC work on all three legacy airline websites.

pinniped

Don't go there. I was just beginning to experiment with, and like, AS. But our budding relationship probably won't last beyond Dec 31.

toomanybooks

And CHI for Chicago.

Is there a list of all of them? US and worldwide?

chuckworth

QSF for Bay Area airports (SFO/OAK/SJC).

xliioper

In addition to the ability to use generic city codes (like WAS and NYC) mentioned above, the advanced fare search on UA, AA, DL all have an include "Nearby Airports" option for the fare search (UA even lets you specify the distance).

LegalTender

KCI/MKC/MCI pull up Kansas City. Selling tickets > splitting hairs.

DenverBrian

Gee, I don't know. If only there was a way to ask such a question to a search engine like Google.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Metropolita..._Airport_Codes

toomanybooks

It worked! Someone else did it for me!

xliioper

Too bad no one actually appears to support QSF and QMI.

InkUnderNails

I have an upcoming trip to the NYC area. It is a full week with Sunday/Saturday travel. I looked at EWR (closest to work, no NS), ISP (used to be a nice little airport, long way, sort of, from work and no NS), and LGA (dreadful airport subject to delays, some NS but horrible times of departure). I can equally easily fly out of two different airports. I also ran an Orbitz search just for potentials and EWR looked good on UA, but I am still spending down points, I have 400,000 to go. The WN COS policy is a game changer as well.

I even looked at BDL and PHL. So, two out and five return potentials. In the end I chose PHL. Good schedules, 1/2 the price of any of the others and about 2 hours from PHL to work location hotel, two hours that I easily get back by using NS instead of one-stop. Downside? It is PHL, but I have had good luck here, luck being a key factor of success at PHL. I have used PHL for work in NJ many times. The drive is not that bad unless it is during a snowstorm. Been there and done that.

Yes, there is a lot that goes into these decisions. However, local is really subjective depending on the situation and the person traveling.

Here is my suggestion since we are building wish lists. Allow the passenger to select departure and destination airports and then click on additional cities from a map for either end, no arbitrary regional designation. Then show me the full list in departure time order. Allow filters for NS, OS and Connecting. A filter for <total flight time would be good.

Peoriaman1

How about when they ARE price competitive?

I am certain it varies market-to-market. Southwest might compare poorly flying to, say, LAX or SFO but have a great price (compared to the competition) to ONT or SJC. All my flights are to the same handful of destinations and I check prices all the time.

FCfree

While I have no doubt that there are some instances where some other airline is cheaper than Southwest, I sure have trouble finding it when I am planning my trips.

I have a couple of trips coming up. I just booked them in the last couple of months and I will admit, I didn't price shop it, I just went to Southwest.com. I watch the prices on Southwest.com and rebook when there is a price drop. The current prices are the lowest that they have been since I have been monitoring these flights -- $69 each way.

I just went to Google Flights, Spirit and United and compared the same flights. Spirit is $42 each way, but when I add a checked bag and a carry on bag (which I will need for this trip), those are $65, making the total $107.

United is about $120 each way, plus bag fees.

I can certainly see and imagine that for some flight with less than 3 weeks notice there are times when other airlines plus their bag fees cost less than Southwest.

It would be nice if Southwest could present all the combinations, but that doesn't currently fit within their display format. Perhaps it could with a minor modification.

toomanybooks

Huge generalizations cannot be made about fares of WN versus others. Highly dependent on a bunch of factors, which change all the time.

I just now checked MDW-LAS departing today in 3.5 hours. Return Friday, midday. $220 total RT. No 5:50 am flights, perfectly good times of day.

On AA? Over $1000!

The 11:45 WN MDW-LAS flight today? Almost $600 WGA one-way vs. $110 a couple hours later.

I am contemplating a trip CHI-RIC Aug 2-5. WN is $432 RT and AA is $237.

So what conclusions can be drawn from this tiny sample? Sometimes WN is more, sometimes less.

Usually for me ex-MDW with some planning they are less.