<p>I sometimes get really creative and make my own itineraries out of two tickets bought on different websites, e.g. Southwest & United.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for an airline to take care of you, Southwest is your choice. Can you arrange for SW to fly most of the way, and trust your local airline for the (hopefully) short hop to/from a SW hub?</p>
<p>as to Chicago, again, since Southwest goes into Midway Airport, even if it is raining (or snowing), they never have the delays that O’Hare does. It is not unusual if O’Hare is experiencing 3-4 hour delays that Midway might be experiencing a 20-30 minute delay. It’s almost like they’re not even in the same city.</p>
<p>Interesting that so many of you like southwest - they are way down on my list of airlines… My main airline is United - and they have been nothing other than great to me over the years. </p>
<p>In this situation however, I would probably look at American since they have better connections on this route and more flights. The whole key for me is more flights since if and when something goes wrong, the airline with the most flights is best able to adapt and get me where I need to be in a reasonable (if late) time frame.</p>
<p>I live where United is the hub. I detest United for many, many reasons which mostly include very screwed up travel results.</p>
<p>When I fly Southwest, I can pretty much count on them doing everything possible to get me to where I am going, and give me honest answers to my questions. The biggest difference between the two, though, is that United flies into O’Hare and Southwest flies into Midway. I’ve found that by flying into smaller airports, Southwest often avoids many of the delays, backups, etc. that go along with flying into larger airports. The exception I’ve found is Philadelphia.</p>
<p>I only fly with United only to collect miles on my Air Canada frequent flyer program and for no other reason. I’m not signing up for mileage plus-United may go bankrupt, Air Canada is far from it.</p>
<p>I would not wait much longer to book flights for Thanksgiving. That is the single worst flying time in the entire year. I would look for the first flights of the day – the later the flight, the longer the possible delay. I would choose Dallas or Atlanta over Chicago because of possible weather problems.</p>
<p>We have a kid on the opposite coast. Whenever possible, we try for the DC connection (it’s usually Dulles). My husband traveled extensively for a while and he would fly days out of his way to avoid Charlotte. I would do the same to avoid Phili. </p>
<p>DD is flying back here at Christmas by way of Las Vegas (on Southwest). That is a new one for us.</p>
<p>Mission accomplished. It was a pain. It looked like she was going to have to stay an extra day to save us mucho dinero but as I was going to book it that flight went up and the sunday went down. She will have some long layovers on her return but that is the way it goes. I was able to use my points with american express so it won’t cost me any actually money.
She will go through Dallas/Ft worth both directions on American.</p>