Southwest Sale – check existing reservations

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Southwest Fare Sale 4-11-17

Southwest is out with its latest fare sale, with fares from just $59 one-way (or less than 3k points) on a variety of routes for flights booked by 4/20/17. Here is an example of a low end fare (in points), between Washington, DC and Indianapolis:

WAS-IND round trip

As you can see, that round is just 5,994 points and $11.20 round trip. I saw a few other decent values in this week’s sale, such as Albany, NY to Denver, Colorado nonstop for $118 or 6,908 Rapid Rewards points one-way:

ALB-DEN October

And while weekend prices are often a bit higher, this route was even quite reasonably priced as a weekend trip, with a Friday-Sunday in October coming in at just 15,376 points and $11.20 (or $258 round trip), nonstop:

ALB-DEN Round Trip Oct

That compares pretty favorably to the competition, with weekend options all involving connections and starting at $403 — and unless you’re a credit card holder or an elite member, bags don’t fly free:

ALB-DEN Google Flights

Of course, if you have a companion pass, the value over alternatives there is incredible — at a net cost of less than 7,700 points each round trip plus $22.40 in taxes, that’s hard to beat. American, of course, has no save availability on Friday/Sunday, so it would be 60,000 miles per person round trip to fly American:

ALB-DEN AA
Companion pass holders will fly 2 people round trip on direct flights for about a quarter of the mileage required for one person with AA that weekend.

Also remember to check your existing reservations — if the prices have dropped, you can get the difference refunded. The process is simple — just click to “change” your flight and select the new flight you want. You can even select the same exact flight you already have — if it has dropped in price, you will be refunded the difference. Here’s an example of a time I did that:

Southwest Change Refund

As you can see, my new ticket total (6,656 points) was less than the exchanged ticket total (9,536 points), so I received a refund of 2,880 points. Those points go directly back into your account and can be used immediately (and have no expiration beyond normal program terms). If you do this with a paid ticket, you will receive Southwest credit that will be good for 1 year from the date that you originally made your booking.

See a link to the full sale here and search availability a month at a time here (just change the city pairs and month).

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Eli C

Thanks for the heads up Nick! Just got back 1600 points! 🙂

Askia Suruma

Thanks, this was super helpful! I had an August flight I was able to get a credit for since it dropped in price. I wish all airlines made this as easy as Southwest does…

Boonie

If you have a companion you have to cancel that reservation first, than you can change it. I was able to get 3100 points back so it does help to check but looks like it did charge me the $11.20 fee again.