Falling Airline Prices

I heard in passing yesterday (on the news or somewhere) that prices on holiday airfare were starting to lower considerably. We bought tickets on Southwest a while ago for Mitch to fly to Philly to pick up Sarah for Christmas -- on December 23rd. Ugh. It was the most we've ever paid for airfare for that trip! When I heard that prices were falling, I immediately headed to Southwest's website to see if our fare had lowered. Sure enough, it had!

We love Southwest for a number of reasons, but our favorite Southwest perk is the ability to go back later and "change" your flight so you pay LESS for the airfare. In this case I "re-booked" Mitch and Sarah on the exact same flight (same time and date) and because the airfare was cheaper today than when we bought it, we now have a $62 credit to use on a future flight. You have to use the credit within 1 year of the original date you purchased the flight, but that is not a problem for us.

We could have saved closer to $200, but that would've required a flight with two stops and we avoid that at all costs! Southwest does not charge for the change even if we had changed the date or the flight -- we still would've netted a savings in this case. On most other airlines, any change will incur a minimum of a $100 fee (if that hasn't gone up recently).

If you've thought about traveling over the holidays, I suggest going shopping for flights -- we definitely saw a drop in prices and saved ourselves some cash on our next flight.