Travel Deal of the Day (June 11, 2007)

Finding good airfares is not straightforward. You cannot just rely on web travel agent sites such as Travelocity since the inventory and fares are limited. You cannot rely on a single airline site since the fares are too limited. It often helps to use an “aggregator” such as kayak.com or sidestep.com which collects fares from airline websites, web travel agent sites and other travel websites. In addition to an aggregator site, when finding fares on Southwest, it is quite beneficial to download the “Ding” tool on Southwest’s website.

The Deal:
Download the Ding tool on www.southwest.com to get access to private sale fares offered by Southwest usually on a daily basis. Some fares sales are better than others, but recently Southwest has offered extraordinary fares including $30/way coast-to-coast fares. The routes which are on sale are seemingly selected at random, so you never know what fares will be on sale. But it always pays to check fares, since the fares can be extraordinarily low.

How:
(1) Go to www.southwest.com and download the Ding tool. (An icon for Ding will become installed on your system tray in the bottom right corner of your screen.)
(2) Click on the Ding icon on your system tray to find that day’s Ding fares.

The Inside Scoop:
Ding is beneficial for people who can make quick decisions. The fares are often on sale only for a few hours, so you must be able to purchase your ticket quickly. However, Southwest has two policies which help you if you make a purchase which you later regret:
(1) All Southwest fares, regardless of how cheap, are refundable for 24 hours after purchase; and
(2) Southwest has no change fee. So if you purchase a ticket you later cannot use, you can use the fare value as a credit for a year on Southwest without any change fee applied to your fare value.