Top Four Reasons Southwest is the Best

While traveling internationally has many different options when it comes to airlines and which are the best to take, domestic travel is a piece of cake. Southwest is absolutely the way to go.

In a previous post I discussed how award seat availability works on airlines- usually seats open around 11-12 months ahead of time and there are only a few available on each flight. If you snooze, you likely lose.

Southwest is COMPLETELY different. And offers huge benefits for anyone who is looking to travel within the U.S.

1. Seats open on Southwest flights approximately 6 months or so in advance. While most airlines update on a daily basis for releasing new seats a year ahead of time, Southwest releases seats in waves. Their next wave will most likely be this spring and will open flights for later summer and fall. I don’t know on the exact dates of these releases, but they open a lot at once- not just one day at a time like others.

This can be both good and bad. It’s good, because you don’t need to plan quite so far in advance. Bad, because if you need to make other reservations super far in advance, you won’t be 100% sure on your flights yet if you’re waiting on Southwest. However there are a number of ways to work around this.

First, Southwest flights are pretty predictable. For example, we’re planning a trip for Labor Day weekend- but flights for September have not yet been released. In order to estimate how many miles I’ll need for this trip, I pulled up Southwest’s calendar for some dates in August (pretty close to September). I plugged in my destination and the day of the week I was looking for. Since we’re planning to leave on Friday after work I looked at Friday afternoon flights for a few different weeks that were already open. And they followed pretty much the same schedule. I knew then how many miles I could estimate I would need and what kind of itinerary I would be looking at when flights for September open.

2. BIGGEST BENEFIT OF ALL: There is no limit to the number of award seats- if Southwest has an open seat, you have an open award seat. While most airlines offer just a few of these award seats per flights, Southwest opens EVERY seat as an award seat option. When searching, you simply click to display results in dollars or points.

So while my hopes of getting an award seat on another airline for a holiday weekend in the U.S. are next to nothing- with Southwest my options are wide open!!!!!!

3. There are no standard mileage requirements on Southwest. While all other airlines charge 12,500 miles for any domestic flight, Southwest has no set standard in place. Instead, everything is price based. So if the actual $ cost of the ticket is cheap, so are the number of miles needed. This can be EXTREMELY valuable for short flights. For example, to fly from Omaha to Denver or Chicago is usually only around 6,000 miles. That’s less than half of what it would cost on any other airline!!!

Of course, sometimes there are flights that are far above the standard 12,500 cost. For example, our flights to Seattle for April were 6,000 points to get there and about 15,000 to get back. However, adding it together you reach a total of 21,000- still cheaper than the standard 25,000 miles for other airlines.

4. No change fees charged. This means if you book and then to change your flight, no problem. You have those miles or dollars credited in your Southwest account to be used later. Additionally, if you book a flight and then the ticket price drops, you can call Southwest to re-book at the lower price. Oh, and your bags fly free! No checked baggage fees either for your first two bags- that could easily save $50-$100 roundtrip as well!

I never use any other airline besides Southwest to fly domestically. Hopefully these top four reasons clearly explain why:

1. Seats open in chunks rather than daily
2. Unlimited award seating
3. Price based mileage requirements
4. No change fees OR baggage fees

Don’t ever use miles in the U.S. on another airline again!