# Southwest Awards Flights Unavailable



## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 17, 2008)

I have an award and my son has to fly down from San Francisco unexpectedly, so I was going to use that award. Not available. Other weeks and locations I checked - unavailable. This is for "Standard Award", but "Freedom Award", which requires TWO awards, are available. I think Southwest has just seriously devalued my award and is trying to switch everyone to needing 2 awards for one round trip. My award ends in August, unless I pay to extend it. I find this very frustrating.
Liz


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## tlsbooks (Jul 17, 2008)

Is the flight you want fairly soon?  Southwest (like all airlines) only allows a certain number of Rapid Rewards seats per flight.

I'm saying this with fingers cross because we book a lot of flights on Southwest using Rapid Rewards, have not yet had a problem, and hope your situation is an aberration and not a new trend.


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## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 17, 2008)

Well, this was very quick, (my dad is seriously close to passing on), but I checked some other things too and found the same results. Lots of "Freedom Award" availability, none for "Standard Awards". You might check some of the places you fly and potential dates, just to see if this is a trend.
Liz


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## bogey21 (Jul 17, 2008)

I just did a Dallas - El Paso for August 16-August 20.  Smooth as silk!

Nothing devalued here!!

George


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## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 17, 2008)

That's good to know. Thanks,
Liz


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## tlsbooks (Jul 17, 2008)

A few days ago I did 4 mid-Oct. flights from Orlando to PHX using Rapid Rewards for all of them.  

Have you tried calling Southwest?  Maybe there's a computer glitch?


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## gorevs9 (Jul 17, 2008)

Liz Wolf-Spada said:


> I have an award and my son has to fly down from San Francisco unexpectedly, so I was going to use that award. Not available. Other weeks and locations I checked - unavailable. This is for "Standard Award", but "Freedom Award", which requires TWO awards, are available. I think Southwest has just seriously devalued my award and is trying to switch everyone to needing 2 awards for one round trip. My award ends in August, unless I pay to extend it. I find this very frustrating.
> Liz



Where is his final destination?  I see plenty of Standard Awards in July from SF to LAX.


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## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 17, 2008)

I was only checking to Ontario from Oakland. He'd prefer to fly out of San Francisco, but LAX is about 2 hours away in traffic and Ontario is an easy trip of 45 minutes.
Liz


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## Luanne (Jul 17, 2008)

Liz Wolf-Spada said:


> I was only checking to Ontario from Oakland. He'd prefer to fly out of San Francisco, but LAX is about 2 hours away in traffic and Ontario is an easy trip of 45 minutes.
> Liz



I'm seeing availability today, then not again until July 26 for SFO to Ontario.


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## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 17, 2008)

Did you mean Oakland to Ontario? I think Southwest only flies SFO to LAX, but I'd love it if they added Ontario to that route.
Liz


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## Diane (Jul 17, 2008)

I got stuck recently having to use two round trip rewards on SW for one round trip from Albuquerque to Cleveland.  It was fairly last minute, but this would not have happened a year or so ago on SW.

Diane


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## Luanne (Jul 17, 2008)

Liz Wolf-Spada said:


> Did you mean Oakland to Ontario? I think Southwest only flies SFO to LAX, but I'd love it if they added Ontario to that route.
> Liz



Yes, I meant OAK to ONT.


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## anniemac (Jul 17, 2008)

Last week I booked 2 seats Indy to Vegas for July 27-July 31.  No problems.


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## Liz Wolf-Spada (Jul 18, 2008)

Diane, I agree. Southwest was great even last minute for rewards and obviously the seats are there, they are just now reserved for either paying customers or people willing to use two rewards to get one useable one.
Liz


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## pointsjunkie (Jul 20, 2008)

did you try booking 1 way award for either coming or going? if it is available use it for 1 half and pay for the other half of the trip. at least you are not outlaying all that cash.

you can separate your rewards,do it all the time.and it can be used for anyone.

hope this helps.


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## Diane (Jul 20, 2008)

No, I didn't try booking one way only and yes, I have often separated rewards and used one for one-way.  But, wouldn't normal non-double reward availability have shown up as a matter of course if available one-way?  I often run into different fares one way or the other when buying SW tix.

Diane


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## pwrshift (Jul 20, 2008)

For what it's worth, I've noticed Air Canada's domestic FF standard tickets non-stop are very hard to get ... but easy to get them if you have a stop/change plane somewhere.  One of the problems dealing with an airline without real competition.  

Southwest has gas futures at something like $51 a barrel to 2012 so they're not pinching at all on gas costs compared to other airlines, so raising prices and making it harder to get FF seats seems a strange way to win friends.

A few years back, Air Canada deleted 'compassionate' flights because they said it was easy to get better prices buying economy.  In reality, that was a lie.  Nice.


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