When to Book Flights on Southwest in 2021
June 9, 2021
Everything has been changed so much by the pandemic for travel, that what we knew before, may or may not be true. I am going to Orlando in August of 2021 and have been tracking the cost of points to book these flights for a while now with Southwest Airlines. Before, the advice was to book your Southwest flights when the schedule opened up and I also found that booking on Tuesday through early morning Wednesday, resulted in the best price. Airline travel is still recovering and I think will continue to evolve for some time as we recover.
This was my result for two people to fly from Columbus, Ohio on a Monday morning August 2nd to MCO and back on Friday, August 6th in the evening :
On January 8th, 2021 the cost was 38,772 points
On February 19th, 2021 the cost was still 38,772 points
On April 5th, 2021 the cost was 41,672 points
On May 4th, 2021 the cost was 44,344 points
On May 6th, 2021 the cost was 32,916 points using the date switch hack and I booked my flights saving 11,756 points. This hack was where Southwest let you book flights for the lowest price you could find on the calendar and rebook your flights for a date and time within 30 days of the original booking at the same price.
On June 3rd, 2021 the cost was 29,212 points, so I rebooked my flights saving an additional 3,704 points from my original booking the previous month.
Based on this experience, it seems that the sweet spot is around 60 days out from when you want to travel on Southwest. How this will hold for future bookings, only time will tell.