Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great Father’s Day weekend. Even though I didn’t see my dad yesterday, I did speak to him on the phone and helped him book an award flight to Seattle. As I was searching for Southwest Airlines flights for him, I found an award flight for 9,631 Southwest Airlines Rapid Reward Points (SWA RR Points). Unfortunately, my dad did not see the same price, he saw a higher price. Let me explain why.
In the above screenshots, I was searching for 1 adult and the price was 9,631 SWA RR Points. In the below screenshots, I changed the search from 1 adult to 2 adults. The same flight then repriced at 11,902 SWA RR Points per person. Why did the price increase by 2,271 SWA RR Points?
The reason the price changed is because of fare buckets. Every ticket on Southwest Airlines (and many other airlines) falls into a fare bucket. In the below (fictional) diagram, there is 1 seat available at the price of 9,631 SWA RR Points. However, there are 4 seats available at the price of 11,902 SWA RR Points. If I want to buy 2 tickets at the same time, Southwest Airlines will charge me for 2 tickets in the second fare bucket (11,902 SWA RR Points per ticket), rather than 9,631 SWA RR Points for the first ticket and 11,902 SWA RR Points for the second ticket.
From the airline’s point of view, they don’t want to show a price difference since that might confuse the person purchasing the tickets. They may also assume that if someone is happy paying the higher price, why not charge both passengers the higher price. With that said, if I book tickets for 2 or more people at the same time, I always check the price for one person and see if there is a price difference. Sometimes there is no price difference, sometimes there is just a small price difference, and other times there is a huge price difference. It only takes a few seconds to double check the price before you book your tickets.
In the end, my dad booked 1 ticket at the 9,631 SWA RR Points price and then immediately booked the second ticket for my mom at the 11,902 SWA RR Points. Pro Tip: keep checking the price of that flight and see if the price drops below 11,902 SWA RR Points. If it does, you can rebook your Southwest Airlines ticket and get back the difference in SWA RR Points. This happens if a passenger who bought a cheaper ticket on this flight decides to change flights or cancel this ticket. The ticket will go back into the fare bucket inventory and will be available for other people to purchase.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone.
P.S. You might also like reading Are Southwest Airlines Anytime Fares a Better Deal than Wanna Get Away Fares?
Hey Grant,
How do you then make sure the seats are together? I did this with AA miles for my best friends honeymoon. I selected award seats that were together even though they were booked separately.
I’m worried that if something happens they will rebook seats apart. Is there something I can do to prevent this from happening?
Good question, Ashley. With SWA, it is open seating so there are no assigned seats. Make sure to check-in 24 hours before the flight takes off to secure your boarding spot. When you board together, hopefully you can find seats together. For other airlines, you should be able to select seats next to each other after purchasing your tickets. If the airline decides to change your seats (not common), just ask the airline or flight attendants for help finding seats together.
Yeah, but if people do this and flights cancel, the passengers might end up on different flights, and if a flight just cancelled it may be hard to get two seats together after everyone was automatically rebooked.
That’s true, you just need to decide if you will forgo any savings on the ticket with the “cost” of being rebooked on a flight. I’ve been very lucky and haven’t had any flight cancellations in s really long time. I’ll take the upfront savings every time.
I don’t see how that would happen on SWA. It doesn’t matter how many award tickets you book… Each passenger gets a different confirmation number regardless of whether you book at once or at different times. Unless I’m missing something, the risk is the same, no?
Even though each passenger gets their own confirmation number, when a flight gets cancelled, the system may automatically put all passengers from the same reservation booking on new flights. That is just a hunch.
Grant, why didn’t you assist your parents to get the companion pass? That trip could be 9600 miles for BOTH!
They don’t travel domestically enough. I would probably use all their SWA points before they could :)