UPDATE: Who's watching Southwest prices in anticipation of 3/18 release? UPDATE: TIX RELEASED 03/15.

[nkereina]

you’d think they’d want to be encouraging people to fly with these MAX issues.

I have to wonder if these inflated prices are helping to make up for lost revenue by grounding the planes. All of the "sold out" flights that were out today are ones that could not be booked at all due to the planes being out of commission. For my route, those flights happen to be the ones I would book (early and late nonstops). So, I didn't book today because of that.

 

[katallo]

We feel the same way. Pricing was ridiculous especially for non stops.

 

[bearybubba]

Thanks to whoever posted that they were released today! Even getting out of BUF the end of Oct seems high. We can usually get $99 flights but it's already up to $129 for the am flight and $118 for the pm flight...Not as high as some have said on here but still high for BUF!

 

[Daisybell911]

My flights are about $400 more than they usually are on release day. I tweeted them and they said “demand was high”. I don’t believe that for a second. What I do believe is that they are taking advantage of downed flights and creating false demand and raising prices.

 

[nkereina]

Thanks to whoever posted that they were released today! Even getting out of BUF the end of Oct seems high. We can usually get $99 flights but it's already up to $129 for the am flight and $118 for the pm flight...Not as high as some have said on here but still high for BUF!

I fly out of BUF too and your prices don't seem bad to me. We booked on release day last year for October 2018 and paid more than that - closer to $150 each way, as I recall.

 

[McNs]

Bah! All the Sundays leading up to my travel day had a nice mid morning direct flight for $188. They released my Sunday and the mid morning direct isn't there, the 6:40am flight is $208 and the 2pm flight is sold out across all fare classes, so guessing it is just to do with the Max issue. I guess I'll just go ahead and book the 6:40, at least it gies us a bit more time at our next destination, but will need to look at other transport options to MCO as we were going to DME (will likely Uber...)

I wonder if higher pricing is just for MCO flights due to the early opening of SWGE? Maybe they started with higher prices and fewer of the cheaper seats?

 

[bearybubba]

I fly out of BUF too and your prices don't seem bad to me. We booked on release day last year for October 2018 and paid more than that - closer to $150 each way, as I recall.

WOW, you're right!!! I just looked at my flights from last year and we paid $138 pp for a mid-afternoon flight. I just paid $129 for a 6am flight. Not much cheaper...We should fly out of PIT but that's an extra hour driving and parking is more expensive. I'll keep an eye on the prices and hope for a drop that I can use as a credit for our flight back.

 

[Rach3975]

I guess we won't be flying Southwest after all. The prices are about the same as United and American, but the times are much worse. We have 3 local airports. Southwest has cancelled all non-stops from one, severely limited them at the second (even more than in the last release), and the 3rd airport means additional costs (a shuttle instead of being dropped off, significantly longer ground travel times plus rush hour traffic) that make it not worth it. Not that the fares for any of the 3 airlines were good (about $200 each way from the DC area), but with a 4-day trip we can't spend more than 2 days driving.

 

[AliceandPete]

I didn’t even think to check flights until around 8 am Eastern and by that time the two flights I could have taken to Orlando were $168 or $188. No thanks. The return flight was $106 so I booked that. JetBlue had a flight to Orlando for $156 that included a suitcase and I liked the time better. So it’s JetBlue on the way down and Southwest on the way back.

 

[georgina]

I have American airlines points I can never use. Someone told me they can be used to pay for WDW resort hotels, so I may check that out sometime. They and United have no non-stops from PIT-MCO, and their cheapest 1 stops are almost twice as much as my SW flights.

 

[maxiesmom]

We feel the same way. Pricing was ridiculous especially for non stops.

What is a non-stop???? None of those from my home airport, or back to it.

I would be happy with a layover that wasn't over 3 hours long. Delta is looking good to me. $258 is the lowest one way on Southwest, and that is at 6:45 am with a 40 minute layover. No thanks!

 

[Darcy03231]

I wasn't impressed with SW's fares. I keep checking them, but lately we've been flying more on Delta and JetBlue. Flight times are better, more non-stops and better prices.

 

[Daisybell911]

I ended up going with Spirit. I saved close to $300 over SW prices and that is after paying for two checked bags, two carry ons and reserving the Big Seats on both legs of the journey.

 

[kristenrice]

What is a non-stop???? None of those from my home airport, or back to it.

I would be happy with a layover that wasn't over 3 hours long. Delta is looking good to me. $258 is the lowest one way on Southwest, and that is at 6:45 am with a 40 minute layover. No thanks!

We are flying out of MDW instead of GRR this time. The times aren't the greatest (for our purposes, this trip) but the prices are better...$139 vs $258 O/W. We booked all of our flights with points so if any of the flights in or out of GR drop in price (i.e. back into the range of the points that we have available) then we will switch to GRR flights. We have ground transportation options available to us so that we can fly out of one airport and back home to a different one if needed.

 

[Searc]

My flights are about $400 more than they usually are on release day. I tweeted them and they said “demand was high”. I don’t believe that for a second. What I do believe is that they are taking advantage of downed flights and creating false demand and raising prices.

If you are flying to FL, October is a very, very busy month at WDW.

 

[EACarlson]

I was just reading up on the grounding of the planes and it seems as if Boeing is hoping to roll out a software update to the planes within the next month that should make them safer. So the question becomes if you want to roll the dice and wait a month (maybe longer) for when those flights will be released. I'm in the same boat.

Book the connecting flight now and cancel if the non-stop becomes available. It's bad enough having to have a layover, even worse if you overpaid when you didn't have to.

 

[nkereina]

Book the connecting flight now and cancel if the non-stop becomes available. It's bad enough having to have a layover, even worse if you overpaid when you didn't have to.

Connecting flights are regularly more expensive than nonstop ones from my home airport. If I did that and nonstop ones became available at some point, I'd likely receive a SWA credit that I'm not sure I'd use. Rolling the dice for now and seeing if this upcoming software update does anything!

 

[JediBonas]

Our flights were a little more then we paid for the same dates last year (and earlybird was more??). Last year we paid $1139/4 round trip, this year it's $1383. I'm more annoyed that they keep getting rid of non-stop flights, anyone know why? When we started going to Disney we had our pick of three or four non-stops each way, last year it was down to two, this year there was one. We always take the earliest one, now we're stuck with a 2 pm flight, the only non-stop, and pretty much missing a full day at Disney. Flying out of Albany.