<p>HImom, I think Southwest tends to have high fares close to the flight date because they fill up most of their flights. I’ve only had a few I’ve been on where I was the only person in my 3 seat grouping.</p>
<p>I did have one amazing flight where for an entire airplane there was, like, ten of us. They gave each one of us a full box of those snacks to much on for the whole flight. :)</p>
<p>Southwest flights need to be booked more than 2 weeks in advance or they raise dramatically. I found this out when I had to travel for a funeral. They also don’t discount for traveling to a funeral (but they do have a military discount and other ones that escape me). </p>
<p>I found a good rate on USair but unfortunately it was on USair! I worried the whole flight that I would be bumped, that I would miss my connection, that I would not get my little carry on into the bin and they would gate check it, and then they would lose it, and I would end up at the funeral wearing jeans. Luckily, things turned out all right but I’ve had all those experiences on USair before (except for the funeral part).</p>
<p>l think a lot of these rate changes reflect airline experience on when people prefer to book. DW doesn’t like booking “too early” but starts getting really nervous if she isn’t booked three or four weeks ahead of flight time. Airlines feed this anxiety on multi-carrier Web sites … “Just three tickets left at this price!” Yawn. Head over to the airline-specific Web Site and there are two dozen left at that price.</p>
<p>My Airline Poker stories aren’t any different from those of prior posters. A few times we’ve had to “fold” and try the game again a week or two later. (When that happens I tell DW there were plenty of cheap flights available, but no tickets yet because my Credit Card was rejected.)</p>
<p>busdriver, pay the $20 or whatever and book FF mile fares with a Delta agent. I was doing the same thing when trying to use miles last spring to Paris. Push, try again, day after day via Amsterdam. Never worked. Called the agent, and she said, oh, the code share miles with KLM (or whatever it was) are blocked these days. But she got me the 60,000 miles, out of Chicago, with routing right back my home town, which I’d never have gotten online. They see the entire picture and is a far more efficient use of my time. </p>
<p>For the rest of you as well, if you are being driven nuts by websites, call the airline, and pay the fee to book with an agent. Back when my travel agency was in business, used to book with them on occasion for some of these same reasons. They understand that a certain day or route is impossible, and can steer you to workable alternatives. And I LIKE playing with bookings and finding on line deals.</p>
<p>One time the procrastination paid off for me - I was able to get last minute flights to Hawaii for less than the price of the 1 hour in-state business trip flight I just completed. The fares were unbelievable cheap and I think it was because of it being the last minute (a day or two before the flight) and the airline (Hawaiian Air) still had empty seats they were trying to fill. Of course I could do this because I was flexible - if they’d have been too expensive I just would have gone somewhere else or gone there at a different time.</p>
<p>“busdriver, pay the $20 or whatever and book FF mile fares with a Delta agent”</p>
<p>Greatlakesmom, I often have success with booking/rebooking when going through the agents. I fly all the time, so I’m a diamond medallion, and it is always free to have them book it. They have been so helpful to me over the years. In this case, I called them several times, and I generally was showing greater availability and lower mileage online than they could find. They would tell me that the route was 200K miles, or we needed to fly 3 legs…it was ugly. They were also very frustrated, saying that the international mileage booking system was very erratic. So when I found something online that was a good route, and cheap, I grabbed it before it went away (5 seconds later). What they were able to do, was refund me the miles after I’d already booked, if they could see the cheaper mileage tickets too. Sometimes they could…sometimes they couldn’t, while I was showing it online right at that minute. There is really something wrong with their system that needs to be fixed. One agent was so excited that I got a round trip to Rome for 60K miles, she started thinking about going there herself.</p>
<p>busdriver, very interesting. My impression as well was that something was wrong with their system if they post fares that no one has been able to book for days to weeks. Now that I think about it, is this legal? False advertising? </p>
<p>Question, so if you use miles to book a fare, use say 32,000 for a domestic, and later find it for 25,000, they will refund the mileage difference?</p>
<p>I don’t know about the legality of it, greatlakesmom, but since it is airmiles, they can probably give a reason to do whatever they want. I think the reality is that their international mileage site is just completely messed up. They can’t seem to handle the international partner airlines very well. I swear, I must have checked hundreds of times on that site. It was so annoying and time consuming.</p>
<p>Yes, they will refund the mileage difference in that situation. They just put it back in your account immediately, and have done it several times for me. It’s easier than booking a second ticket, and cancelling the first one. But the normal rebooking/reissue fee is $150, unless you are platinum or diamond, so they might say you’d have to pay $150 for that. I’m not sure if this falls under the category of rebooking/reissue. It was really nice, as they refunded me 100K miles when I found the tickets for less miles, on our international flight.</p>
<p>I thought I heard from a diamond medallion friend that they were going to start charging for rebooking fees too. Grr.</p>
<p>I hope your friend is wrong. I haven’t heard that. That would be a major perk to take away, if you’re talking about charging you a fee just to talk to an agent, or to change your airmiles ticket. We still have to pay the fees to change a paid ticket (except for same day standbys).</p>
<p>Wanted to add to this thread – I just booked our late summer vacation, and I ran into some annoying features that stressed me out a bit.</p>
<p>After searching for the best fares, when I went to the United site to reserve flights I found all but one of the available seats required an extra $69-$99 “premium” fee. And the one seat that did not need this extra fee was a middle seat. So back I went to searching for a better deal.</p>
<p>After I put my reservations on hold, I realized I had spelled one passenger name wrong. The only way to correct this before purchasing is to speak with an agent. The agent corrected my error, then offered to finalize the purchase. She then quoted the total price, which was $100 higher than the price I had on hold. When I asked her about it, she explained that there is an extra $25/ticket to purchase by phone. So I thanked her, and then proceeded to purchase online, saving myself $100. I’m glad I was listening carefully when she quoted me the higher price!</p>
<p>And at the moment I’m still waiting for email receipt so I know my purchase has gone from “Ticket Pending” to “Ticketed”. I hope it doesn’t take long – so far it’s been about 20 minutes.</p>
<p>I hope that name was corrected online, though if it is a minor error, maybe they won’t notice.</p>
<p>Yes, the name was corrected online. I knew that a discrepancy could be a big headache at the point of checking in to board the plane.</p>
<p>This is an old story/issue, but it is still incredibly annoying when it happens. My mother wants to fly from Charlotte to Detroit, and to get a $213 fare she is going to fly from Greensboro which is a 1 1/2 hour drive from Charlotte. (I will drive her) She will then fly to Charlotte and proceed to Detroit. If she had purchased only a ticket from Charlotte to Detroit, on that exact same plane, it would cost her $464. So, for $213 she gets on that same flight, plus she gets an additional trip from Greensboro to Charlotte. Of course there is no way to buy the Greensboro to Detroit plane ticket and board in Charlotte.</p>
<p>^^That is so annoying, NJres. Part of the whole deal about making it expensive to fly hub to hub directly? They know people want to fly this route, so they jack up the price because people will pay?</p>
<p>If I was her, when I flew home from DTW-CLT-GSO, I’d just make sure and carry on my bags, and get off in CLT. Would be nice to let the airline know (AFTERWARDS), just say that plans changed, but not required.</p>