Use This Southwest Hack to Upgrade to a Less Unfortunate Flight
Every traveler on a budget knows a special shade of regret: the moment you queue at 5am and curse yourself for picking the cheapest scheduled flight.
But we all do it. We sacrifice comfort and sleep in exchange for savings, often in the hundreds of dollars. But what if there was a way to fix these flight booking sacrifices before you had to endure them?
There is a Southwest Airlines travel trick that can save you the hassle of choosing the cheapest flight: a free flight change.
Southwest is already earning points for not charging a change fee if you need to change your travel plans. But this hack posted on SlickDeals allows you to change flights without overpaying for a new, more expensive flight .
This is not a advertised deal, so your mileage may vary. But SlickDeals forum members report that this trick works for flights booked with cash or travel points between June 7th and August 10th, 2020. Your new flight is within 14 days of your original booking. You must also maintain your departure and arrival airports.
If you already have a ticket for these dates and would like to change it to a more suitable time or date, search for your ticket on the Southwest website and go through the booking change process.
You won’t need to confirm the changes until after you see if there is any difference in the ticket price, so don’t worry about getting stuck paying more this hack stops working.
If you don’t have a ticket yet, but want to try this method, book the ticket that suits you (even if it’s at a terrible time). Then immediately try changing your flight to see if you can do so at no additional cost.
Airlines must allow you to cancel your ticket purchase within 24 hours without penalty if there is a week or more left before departure, so if you try to plan your trip around this hack and it fails, you can cancel it.
I know this is one of those travel tricks that sounds too good to be true. But if you already have travel plans with Southwest for this summer – or want to plan a trip, for example, right now – it’s well worth it.