When Southwest Free Flights Come in Handy

Unfortunately this past week my Grandmother passed away. It was expected and almost everyone was a car ride away with the exception of my sister. My sister needed to fly to the Northeast from Atlanta and as you can imagine last minute flights were extremely expensive. While the airlines have bereavement fares they are still outrageous.

Since we knew about a week in advance that this day was coming my dad and I teamed up to ensure my sister would have an easy flight home and the cost would not be such a burden. My family was always a Southwest fan and earned many free tickets during the old Southwest Rapid Reward 1.0 program. Between my immediate family we had 8 free roundtrip flights still available. Unlike the new program, seats are capacity controlled, but a free ticket is a free ticket regardless of price. We wanted to book the tickets in advance to ensure free flight availability, but with situations like this you unfortunately just do not know the exact date to fly home. We paid the $50 on two of the tickets to extend them another year and at any given time had two flight options going for my sister. If we needed to change the flights we did without any penalty, that is the beauty of Southwest. No change or cancellation fees! We changed the flights a total of four times and when the time came, my sister had a flight already booked that evening to make it home for the funeral the next day. The unused ticket went back into my Dad’s account to be used at another time. If we had waited, the free flights would no longer have been available and a paid ticket would have cost about $600 roundtrip.

While I know many are anti-Southwest, never dismiss the beauty of no change or cancellation fees! This is probably the best perk one can ask for, espeically when trying to use free tickets.

I also know my Grandmother would be proud as she always loved a good deal! I guess it runs in the family! Love you nanny.