After spending a lot of time flying JetBlue last year, my family has firmly returned to Southwest in 2026. We don’t love Southwest the way we once did, but Southwest is almost always our best option, thanks to having two household Companion Passes (we almost always travel as a family of four or more). We use far fewer points (or would use less cash) to fly with Southwest than we would with competitors. Given my renewed focus on Southwest, there are a number of small things I’ve noticed, many of which have surely existed for a while, but that I nonetheless thought were worth a quick highlight.
My biggest annoyance with “Basic” fares is re-pricing flights
On an Ask Us Anything a month or two ago, I addressed a question about whether and when it makes sense for Southwest premium credit card holders to consider booking fares higher than “Basic”.
If you have the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card or the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business card, your credit card benefits apply no matter which fare type you book. The chart below demonstrates the benefits of each fare type, with cardholder benefits indicated with the credit card symbol.
Even if you buy the Basic fare, you get access to complimentary standard or preferred seat selection for up to 8 passengers on the same reservation at the time of booking, along with your free checked bag for each passenger and the ability to choose complimentary extra legroom seating 48 hours prior to travel (if available).
At the time when I fielded the question, the primary reason I identified as to why a cardholder would consider booking a “Choice” fare or higher is the ability to make a free same-day change after midnight on the day of departure. That makes it possible to book a cheaper fare and potentially change to the more desirable flight if there are still seats available for sale after midnight on the day of departure. Note that each step up in fare type also earns additional points per dollar spent when booking revenue fares.
All of that stands true, but I recently noticed that there is an additional disadvantage to Basic that I hadn’t previously identified: the inability to easily re-price your flight when the price drops. This doesn’t make me more likely to book a “Choice” fare or higher, but it requires an adjustment in habits.
Long-time Southwest enthusiasts are likely used to logging into their booking, selecting to “change flight”, and searching the same date of departure to quickly see if prices have dropped. In the past, one could easily identify which itineraries would cost more or fewer points, or which options cost the same as the booked fare (as indicated by a “0” difference in this old screenshot below).
However, since the launch of “Basic” fares, it isn’t quite as easy to see which fares are cheaper if you are booked in Basic. That is because “Basic” fares can not be changed without paying a fare difference. Southwest interprets that as meaning that Basic customers can only change to a higher fare. So, for instance, I went into “My trips” and selected “change” on the trip below. In this case, we had paid 11,500 points per passenger for a “Basic” fare on the nonstop itinerary (you can see that the “Basic” fare is indicated as my “Current Flight” in the screenshot below). Because I am on the “Basic” fare on that flight, it appears as though “Basic” fares are unavailable on all of the other departures that day.
However, that isn’t true. Basic fares are available on all of those other flights. And the price is now only 9,000 points per passenger on both the nonstop and the 7:20am departure. All of the departures below actually cost the same number of points I paid or fewer. This next screenshot is based on a search initiated from the home page rather than from hitting “change” on my itinerary.
Again, in the past, I would have been able to “change” to the same nonstop departure (or the 7:20am departure), and the price would have been displayed as “-2,500 points” per passenger, since the price had dropped.
However, with a Basic fare, you can no longer easily see when prices have changed since Basic fares can only be changed to a higher fare. And since the reservation information in “My trips” does not clearly display the price paid for an award flight, you’ll need to hunt down your booking confirmation email or comb through account activity in order to figure out how much you originally paid for an individual itinerary, then start your search from the home page to know if prices have dropped.
Instead of simply “changing” to the same flight for a refund of points, you need to cancel and rebook. When booking with points, even “Basic” fares can be cancelled without penalty, so long as you choose to have the taxes refunded to the original form of payment instead of being held as a credit. In the above example, I simply cancelled the original reservation (for which we had paid 11,500 points per passenger times four passengers) and then immediately rebooked (for 9,000 points per passenger), ending up with 10,000 additional points in my account. The end result was the same as it has always been, but it adds a few extra step, like re-entering passenger information, though this can be streamlined if you save passenger information in your booking profile.
That isn’t terribly onerous, but it does require a change in approach.
I should note that a workaround for those who don’t want to cancel and rebook is to first “change” to the Choice fare (in the above example, paying +1,000 points per passenger for that change). Then, it is possible to “change” again (back to the “Basic” fare) for a negative number of points, since “Choice” fares can be changed to a lower-cost fare.
If you have the additional points in your account to do that, you may find it easier than re-entering all of the passenger info (as would be necessary if you cancel and rebook). I did do exactly that on one itinerary without issue.
If you habitually book “Choice” fares or higher, the process of “changing” to receive a points refund has not changed, but you should be aware of this limitation of “Basic” fares for those times when you would book one. I could easily imagine a customer assuming that all of the “Basic” fares were simply sold out if they used the “change” tool instead of searching from the home page.
The upgraded seating window sometimes opens early
I’ve mentioned this on the podcast a couple of times. As a Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business cardholder, I get access to complimentary extra legroom seating 48 hours prior to departure. However, in practice I’ve noticed that that 48-hour window sometimes opens slightly earlier than 48 hours — sometimes, they become available 48.5 hours prior to departure, 49 hours prior, or even a little more than 49 hours prior to departure.
There doesn’t appear to be a particular pattern as to when those extra legroom seats become available. To be clear, sometimes, those extra legroom seats only become available for free at exactly the 48-hour mark, but I’ve found them available sooner about 50% of the time that I’ve checked. A member of our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group recently posted saying that she was skeptical when she heard me mention this on the podcast, but then just last week she was able to select extra legroom seats slightly more than 48 hours prior to departure.
I was able to select Extra Legroom seats slightly more than 48 hours prior to departure for our recent flights home from Las Vegas. It is worth mentioning that I find the same to be true on connecting itineraries: sometimes, extra legroom can only be selected for free 48 hours prior to the departure of the connecting flight, but sometimes the seats become available a little sooner.
I wouldn’t expect those extra legroom seats to be available for complimentary selection more than 48 hours in advance, but I now start obsessively checking around 50 hours prior to departure.
Schedule changes are awesome
This is not at all new, but Southwest schedule changes provide added flexibility. When Southwest changes the schedule on a flight you have booked, they often provide broad latitude to change to a different flight without a fare difference. That can be awesome for those who book far in advance, since it is sometimes possible to pay for a cheap flight you don’t really want and later get the (more expensive) flight you really wanted.
I also noticed that when I went to change a changed-changed flight, I got a credit that was valid for 60 months (rather than the typical 12 months from the time of booking for a Choice fare or higher).
I stumbled on that accidentally when a flight I had booked far in the future (to use an airline incident credit) schedule-changed before I cancelled it. Of course, it is still possible to extend flight credits indefinitely when needed.
Keep an eye on the price after a “sale”
This is definitely old news in the sense that Southwest has been this way for many years, but I just ran into this yesterday: check for re-price opportunities after Southwest ends a “sale”.
Just a few days ago, Southwest ran a 3-day award sale, with prices “from 7,000 points each way”. The day after the sale ended, I rebooked stuff for fewer points than I paid during the “sale”, saving an easy 12,000 points over a single trip.
I have found flight tracking to be very helpful in identifying opportunities for re-pricing. I track the flights of my future Southwest trips through Google Flights. When cash prices drop, I know that points prices have likely also dropped, and I check for re-price opportunities. As identified above, that process is a bit more convoluted than in the past for those situations where I have booked a Basic fare, but it is often possible to save points by monitoring for price changes.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Regarding comments: Comments posted at the bottom of Frequent Miler pages and posts are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
I’ve been using the Ritz card for the taxes on dozens of flights and refunding back to the card when I change/cancel/re-price flights. I’m not looking forward to having to explain to the Chase CSR when redeeming the flight credit exactly which of the flights were actually flown.
Thanks, I’ll definitely use the Basic -> Choice -> Basic trick next time I need to reprice.
Another recent quirk I noticed is that seat map for row 15 (which is the loveseat aisle on some planes) will sometimes show the missing seat as occupied, so you don’t realize you’re getting the weird seat with 6 feet of leg room if you book the seat behind that spot.
They’re actually working on filling in the missing seat on some of their aircraft I believe
+1. That’s a nice a workaround I didn’t consider. Thanks
Great article. As an ALP, I use basic fares all the time. Good to know about the upgrade to Choice followed by downgrade to basic (again) strategy.
I’ve also had some credits returned after a schedule change – good for 5 years as you mentioned.
Worth mentioning, maybe common knowledge but wasn’t for me? Cancelling one side of a RT flight in Basic is a “change” as well – I booked a 14-Day RT to Colorado and needed to shorten it. I had already booked a “Plan B” 1-way so all I needed was to cancel the outbound of our RT ticket.
Long story short, Southwest considers cancelling (not changing!) the outbound flight as a “change” (even for ALP) and told me I’d have to cancel the entire booking and rebook the return flight (which of course was now much higher). I got it worked out but was stunned and I’ll likely never book another RT in Basic again.
I don’t think Southwest is alone in that, are they? That’s why I never book a round trip with any program — I want to be able to change just one end of the trip.
IDK you’re probably right. My experience (post-Covid) has been AA doesn’t care if I cancel one side of a R/T flight booked with miles and I made the mistake of assuming that using RR sidestepped a lot of the penalties for using Basic (Points don’t expire in 6 months the way flight credit does, etc).
Those are pretty much the main programs I use though so I’d definitely defer to you if that’s the way the rest of the carriers operate. An unpleasant surprise to me! 🙂
Southwest seems to change their schedule far less often than they used to. It was possible for a long time to book early and almost guarantee a change at some point and move onto the flight you really wanted. I haven’t had a change to an itinerary at all in the last year.
That certainly might be — I haven’t made an effort to book stuff for that purpose — but, I did just have one a couple of weeks ago.
I find the fact I have to cancel a companion pass reservation to reprice or change a flight to be SO annoying. With assigned seating the importance of booking the companion at the same time is critical.
Yeah, that really is annoying. I’m mostly in the habit of just not adding my companion until a few weeks to a month in advance, but that’s certainly not ideal. Actually, I do have our companions added on some reservations later this year. The idea of changing companions for a specific trip came up the other day (not worth all the details), and I said that I’d rather pay the family member the value of their ticket to not have to go to the headache of cancelling all the future companion tickets and then redoing them 😀
Does upgrading to choice and then downgrading to basic mean we don’t have to cancel the companion’s reservation? If so, I’m sold on this trick!
You can’t make any change to a reservation that has a companion attached — so, no, that doesn’t work. I *usually* don’t add our kids until I’m pretty confident that we’re not going to make further changes, just to save myself from having to constantly cancel them. Contrary to all that, I actually currently *do* have our kids added to more future reservations than usual right now. Several weeks ago, during the “week of WOW”, there was a very brief window one day when flights were on a wild sale where Choice extra fares were….really cheap (it didn’t last anywhere near long enough to post about it). So I added the kids right away to all of the reservations I made that day since we were able to select extra legroom at booking (since our reservations were Choice Extra, we were able to add the kids in the extra legroom also). So that’s a really not-typical situation for me. So that’s why I was hesitant to cancel all of those companion reservations — when we’re just in normal seats, as long as the plane doesn’t look close to full already, I wouldn’t ordinarily hesitate to cancel and re-add if necessary. I’m just in a very atypical situation with some of those future reservations where replacing those extra legroom seats isn’t nearly as likely (and where those reservations are not going to need to be repriced).
Got it, makes sense. I also picked up a steal that week of WOW. My hesitation with not adding my P2’s companion (our toddler) is that the seats close to the front of the plane will be selected closer to the departure date and at 48 hours before check-in there are no extra legroom seats to upgrade to meaning we have to sit towards the back of the plane to remain together (P2 has the priority card).
That makes sense. My wife actually prefers to sit at the back of the plane unless we’ve got some sort of extra legroom seats. If not for extra legroom we’re always in row 27 or 28 anyway, which are usually available even close to departure.
Another issue with basic fare is if you cancel, the credit is only good for 6 months. If you booked it when the dates opened the credit may be expired or close to.
Yes, that’s absolutely true. I didn’t mention that here because I was talking about Basic in the context of booking award flights, where that is not relevant. But yes, we’ve covered that drawback since the launch of Basic.
Nick – this is important to keep in mind when rebooking Basic fares for repricing purposes. If booked more than 6 months in advance, you have to select “refund” for the taxes and fees instead of hold for future use as if you select hold for future use and its a credit that expires before the flight would be taken, you can’t use it to rebook the flight.
It screwed me a couple times in the beginning where I had used non-expiring flight credits to pay for the taxes and fees on Basic awards after the change and repriced flights after a big point drop (so worth losing the $5.60). Since refund wasn’t an option on those, they lost their non-expiring status and became expiring flight credits, which I then lost because my rebooked flight was more than 6 months past the date of original booking.
For those who still have non-expiring flight credits – NEVER use them to pay for taxes and fees for a Basic fare.
Yeah that’s a good point. I never even consider paying taxes with flight credits because I want credit card protections (for $5.60 each way I would much rather use a credit card and have trip delay, cancellation, baggage delay, and all the other associated protections) and I never consider holding the taxes for future use because they’re eligible for a refund to the original method of payment. I never used to pay taxes with flight credits even when they turned into a never expiring credit, because I want the CC protections.
What is your preferred credit card to do this? Thanks!
Either Ritz or CSR. I don’t sweat how many points we earn on the $11.20 each way (taxes for two of us). If I did, CSR would be the answer, but in reality, I use both — I generally use my CSR when booking through my account or now my wife’s Ritz when booking through her Southwest account because I don’t anticipate keeping her CSR as a CSR after anniversary in a couple of months, but we will keep her Ritz.
The credit is only good from the date that you made the original booking. If you cancel a trip that you booked more than 6 months ago, the credit is gone. Always take the refund back to the original method of payment if that’s an option.
Yep!
I also have gotten in the habit of tracking my Southwest flights I’ve booked in Google Flights so I know when to check for a reprice on basic fares.