Mary Louise

Hello,

The SWA website shows that you can book until 1/8/10. When I try, I try I get an error message. Any suggestions?

Thanks

ML

rove312

Probably a glitch when the schedule had just opened. I've been able to book my year-end holiday award. Try again; maybe open a new browser window.

pitflyer

I booked, of course SW had no award seats LAS-PIT Sat, Sun or Mon after Christmas. Guess I'll have to be even more of a heathen and take more days off.

curbcrusher

This morning's schedule extension was a week shorter than expected. Earlier this morning the Travel Tools page announced:

Mary Louise

I was finally able to make my reservations.

Thanks for everyone's quick response.

ML

SWABrian

It does take a while to load all of the schedules into the computer. It is possible that you could book one city pair, but have another show unavailable until all of the schedules are loaded.

SWAVictor

What most likely happened in this case is that there are several servers that drive southwest.com and each server has to be updated when the schedule is extended. Depending on which server you happened to hit when trying to book you may or may not have seen the extended schedule.

This tags on to why the DING! notifications are slightly behind the actual opening. We wait until we know that ALL servers are updated before we send out the DING! notification. (and then it can take up to 30 minutes for all DING! users to get the update, as I explained in more detail in another thread yesterday).

FCfree

A thank you to SWA for my XMAS tickets this year. Great prices. I didn't even consider any other airline for all of the following reasons:

1) No change fees. It is not completely certain that I'm going to be going as planned this XMAS, so no change fees was a really big deal this year. I would not have booked them this early if it was anybody else. Enjoy the use of my money, Southwest, you earned it! I have no problem with letting you use it for a few extra months. The "interest" I'm earning through lower prices more than makes up for it, especially these days with savings accounts at 1%.

2) No bag fees. Who can go for 10 days at XMAS and not need to check a bag? For me, with wife and daughter, its probably going to be more like 5 checked bags (for 3 people). The math is so simple on this one. United's bag fees would be an extra $190 round trip.

3) Best prices. I booked on SWA first, then checked UA and AA. Only if SWA had been really high would I have looked first on UA or AA. If UA or AA was just a little lower, it is very unlikely I would have gone with them, due to bag and change fees. If I had booked and found a really great deal on UA or AA, I can always use the money on some other flight. Book first on SWA and ask questions later! These are some of the best prices I've ever had for my XMAS flights.

4) Point-to-Point. AA used to have a non-stop from STL to LAS. Its not showing on their web site anymore. Connect in DFW or ORD when SWA has a non-stop? I don't think so!

5) Possible award. Even though I'm completely booked for this, I might switch one ticket to an award. I'm currently a 1/4 credit short. When I earn that, I'll check availability and prices and then consider options. You can't do that on UA, AA or F9!

The system was a bit sluggish letting me log on today, and I like to be logged on so that the reservations all are associated with my account. I guess that is good because it means a lot of people were logging in today and buying tickets. Maybe its time to buy another rack of CPU's, however! What a great problem to have!

myperks

booked my thanksgiving trip and part of my christmas trip....
not as cheap as before the schedule opened (for my city pairs of DEN/SJC or SFO)...but still a deal...

ElmhurstNick

Another reason why I love Southwest - for domestic travel, I don't mind opening the schedule a little bit at the time and avoiding schedule changes. I just flipped my Labor Day award trip MDW-RDU (102+ each way) into a mid-December MDW-PHX (128+ each way, although the outbound will probably be $90+ when there's a sale eventually) while there is still space. I'm only 4 credits from another award and will be earning 2 of them this week, so I am confident that I can go get the RDU trip in a few weeks.

I value my WN awards for much less money than my corresponding AA/UA miles (I'd never burn 25k UA/AA miles for ORD-PHX when I can use it for 1/4 of a J ORD-LHR), but then again I only flew about 8500 actual flight miles on WN to earn that free ticket vs. about 11,000 on UA/AA. But the lack of change fees or last minute booking fees on the award tickets makes that $280 feel like much more value.

luv2buynfly

Did the schedule open right at 10am CST today? I tried booking award travel from SLC-FLL for December 20th and came up empty. I got on about 10:20am CST and they were already gone. It also showed no availability on Dec 18th and 19th.

I knew this would be a very hard time for award travel (the last weekend before Christmas) but I figured I could get one of the 3 days. How many award tickets do they allocate per flight? (probably a good question answered on another thread)

curbcrusher

No. It opened nearly an hour earlier than the expected 10am.

swaluvr

Thanks for the post!

I was quite happily shocked to find Standard RRs available for both Thanksgiving AND Christmas travel. Because of this, I chose to renew a few expired/expiring awards and was able to have my son and daughter-in-law save hundreds of dollars flying in to see my aging in laws for Xmas.

I'm actually dreading having my youngest graduate from college in 3 years because we pay his tuition with our SW RR Visa. That may wind up being the end of our many RRs and Companion Pass. I figure that we get close to a 20% return on the tuition costs with the free flights.

I saw today that SW is the #1 airline, with Continental running a distant #2. Sure wasn't news to me! I tell everyone who will listen that there are just too many GOOD reasons to fly SW.