Fantastic pictures, thanks for sharing!
As for Allyn Cutts' comments, I understand your frustration. Airfares, even on Southwest, nudge up and down constantly, depending on supply and demand. Every airline practices some form of "revenue management" to try and maximize their revenue earned on each flight. Under such a practice, certain numbers of seats are set aside for certain fare buckets. The published fare at any given time will depend both on the number of seats that have been sold and the number of seats that are still available for sale. As people buy (and cancel) seat reservations, the published fares potentially change constantly, even right up until the departure time of that particular flight.
The funds you paid for your higher-priced tickets are nonrefundable, unless you purchased refundable tickets. You can use your available, unused nonrefundable funds to purchase a ticket in anyone's name, at least until late January 2011, when new regulations go into effect. After that time, you will only be able to use nonrefundable funds to purchase tickets in the name of the passenger associated with the nonrefundable funds.
I like your idea, though, about the possibility of Southwest providing some functionality on their website that could show you what your nonrefundable funds balance is and what confirmation numbers they're associated with. I fly Southwest almost exclusively, and I'm always buying, and changing, flight reservations. I have to manually keep track of what funds are available under which confirmation numbers, which is a bit time-consuming. I put up with it because I'm loyal to Southwest, but your proposal to have one's Southwest online account keep track of unused funds would make me even more loyal! Great idea!
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