When Southwest Flight Price Goes Down
Isn’t it annoying when you buy an airline ticket and then the price goes down?
Well, if you are flying on Southwest, it’s not annoying at all because it’s super easy to rebook your flight and get points back or a credit.
MY SOUTHWEST FLIGHT PRICE WENT DOWN, NOW WHAT?
Southwest makes it incredibly easy to “change” and “rebook” your flight if the price goes down so that you can get a credit or points back (if you paid with Southwest points).
My example below will show a points booking refund, because 99% of my Southwest flights are booked with points.
The image above is what I see when I login to my Southwest app on my phone (the very top portion). On this screen, select which flight you want to change.
Once you select the flight, it takes you to this screen. You will select “change”
In the image above, it gave me an option to choose my flight to Maui OR the return flight to Denver.
In this example, I chose the return flight. Once I chose that it then confirms the dates. I have removed the dates in the image, as those are my actual flights.
You’ll keep the dates as is if you are just changing to get a refund. But of course you could change the dates here if you wanted to.
Here you can see, there are many time options in which the flight has gone down in price. Simply select your flight (or a new one if desired) and then complete the change and you’ll receive your points credited back into your Southwest account.
CHANGING A SOUTHWEST FLIGHT FAQ
COMPANION PASS: The MOST common question I get is… What if I have a companion attached to my flight… how can I see if the price went down. Well, you can’t. It’s not nearly as simple as the process above.
But there are ways around this…
A few tips if you will/have added a companion to your southwest flight and you want to see if the price has been lowered:
- You can go into your email and find the flight confirmation from Southwest. That will show what you originally paid for your flight. Then you can simply go to Southwest’s site and manually look up that flight to see if the price went down. BUT… if you booked roundtrip, this isn’t helpful because you can only see the total price of the flight.
- If your flight is not in jeopardy of being sold out… remove your companion from your ticket. Then follow the steps above to see if price went down. Remember to RE-ADD your companion 🙂
- In our family, we only have 1 Companion Pass (I know some families have 2 – so this won’t be that helpful) – We will book 1 flight and attach the companion (my son). THEN we’ll book the other adult’s flight. So now we can always check the price on Adult 2’s flight to see if the price has dropped without having to deal with adding/removing companion.
- Honestly, if you just can’t figure out what you paid for your original ticket, just call Southwest and ask. I have had to call Southwest many times and the call is usually less than 5 minutes total.
EARLY BIRD SOUTHWEST FLIGHT TIPS
Early Bird – Remember, if you add early bird and cancel the ticket, you’ll loose the early bird. But if you are just changing a ticket, the early bird stays attached to your ticket. So when you change a flight to get the points refunded, if you have an early bird it will stay in tact.
I do NOT recommend adding Early Bird to your Companion’s ticket. I have found that when I add the Early Bird to MY ticket, my companion automatically gets the boarding assignment directly behind mine.
We take about 6 – 8 round trip flights each year on Southwest. My advice is to check your tickets for price drops regularly and especially as the flight gets closer. I’ve gotten some fantastic point refunds within days of our flights.
BEST CREDIT CARDS FOR EARNING SOUTHWEST POINTS
Personal Card Options:
Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card
50K Southwest Points
Earn 50,000 bonus points after spending $1,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card
60K Southwest Points
Earn 60,000 bonus points after spending $2,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
Business Card Options:
Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card
80,000 points
Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card
60,000 points
You may find these posts helpful:
How to earn a Southwest Companion Pass
Southwest Companion Pass FAQs
