@RoseCliver wrote:
Hello,
Excited by a Southwest Airlines fare sale notification, I promptly visited the site and entered my travel dates. Since I will be using my RW miles, I need to stay witin a certain amount. In selecting the best time to fly calendar I was elated to see a great possibility for us, even gave me the amount which fit into my points. Next I was instructed to select flights and all of a sudden prices where considerably higher than the first page. Is this standard operating procedure?
This appears to be bait-and-switch; none of the flight combinations matched the initial page's prices, even with the cheapest selection.
Greetings from your fellow traveler:
I assume you're referring to this infamous message:
It took me a long time, but I think I finally figured out why I was seeing this for many of my bookings whenever I shopped via the Low Fare Calendar but I'm not sure if this is the same cause for your needs.
Being from SoCal, SW has multiple short-haul non-stop flights up and down the state regularly with routes running every 60-90 minutes at times which allows for commuter travel (i.e.: travel in the morning, take care of business, return in the afternoon).
It took me a while to figure out why I was running into this message frequently during sales, but for me, it was mostly due to most of my trips involving a same-day return trip home which would conflict with the flights that posted the lowest fare.
The message would pop whenever the flight options with the lowest posted fares for the day would not be possible under a same day round-trip itinerary as they would conflict (e.g. If I do the day roundtrip on a Friday and the lowest-priced outbound trip was priced for an evening flight). That would trip the message.
I do agree the message is misleading and should be changed to something like:
"Oops, it looks like one or more flight times with lowest fare is not possible under this Same Day Return Itinerary - But don't give up! You can still..."
What route/dates/fare are you trying to book and I'll see if I can reproduce this?