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Southwest’s low fares calendar helps you find the best deals

  • Million Mile Secrets

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    If you’re anything like me, you’ve been dreaming and scheming about future travel for a few months now. Especially as some restrictions have begun to loosen, it’s been exciting to start once again considering what travel plans I have for the future and what trips my family might enjoy.

    Enter the Southwest Low Fare Calendar — perhaps the best tool for quickly seeing the lowest fares between any two destinations. In this article, we’ll talk about how and why you can (and should!) use the Southwest Low Fare Calendar when planning your next trip on Southwest airlines.

    What is Southwest’s Low Fare Calendar?

    The Southwest Low Fare Calendar is a calendar view on Southwest’s website, which gives you an easy option for viewing the lowest fare on any given day. After you enter your origin and destination, you can select the month in which you plan to travel and quickly see which dates offer the lowest fares.

    The Low Fare Calendar gives great insights into high-level fare pricing trends, such as which weekends are already sold out or which day of the week is typically the cheapest for booking flights. You can also quickly toggle between months to help you decide whether it makes more sense to take that skiing vacation in January, February or March (for example) depending on overall low fare trends.

    How to use Southwest’s Low Fare Calendar

    Best of all, Southwest makes the Low Fare Calendar particularly friendly to use. Start by navigating to Southwest.com and clicking on “Low Fare Calendar” next to “Where we fly” in the middle of the page. Then, enter your desired origin and destination, months for travel, and other details such as the number of passengers, payment type (points or cash) and one-way or roundtrip travel.  

    Note:   When booking with points, you’ll see the lowest fare (in points) displayed on each date in the calendar view. You can also toggle between points and cash to compare!

    After clicking search, Southwest will populate the lowest available fare for each date in the month(s) you selected. This view provides great insight into general pricing trends and should be helpful for any traveler with some flexibility around dates. That being said, I don’t necessarily recommend using the Low Fare Calendar if your dates are set in stone because it’s likely easier to search with your specified dates. 

    From the Low Fare Calendar view, you can click on any date to see a breakdown of all available flights and fares. Keep in mind that while the Low Fare Calendar is helpful, it can sometimes be deceiving. The fare shown on the low fare calendar may be $49, but that might be only a single, inconveniently timed flight with 12 layovers (while the perfect nonstop flight costs twice as much). So be sure to have appropriate expectations when using the low fare calendar.

    Do these purchases earn Rapid Rewards?

    Using the Low Fare Calendar is just another convenient way of booking Southwest flights. So all the same rules apply regarding earning Rapid Rewards points. If you redeem points for your Southwest flight, you won’t earn any Rapid Rewards.

    But if you book your flight with cash, you will earn Rapid Rewards points depending on the following factors:

    • Your status with Southwest
    • The fare type you’ve purchased
    Status levelPoints earned per $1 spent
    Base• Wanna Get Away: 6 points
    • Anytime: 10 points
    • Business Select: 12 points
    A-List• Wanna Get Away: 7.5 points
    • Anytime: 12.5 points
    • Business Select: 15 points
    A-List Preferred• Wanna Get Away: 12 points
    • Anytime: 20 points
    • Business Select: 24 points

    Are there change or cancellation fees?

    Southwest’s change and cancellation fees remain some of the best in the business. In fact, Southwest has long been my favorite domestic airline because they never charge change fees. If you want to change your flight anytime up to 10 minutes prior to departure, you can do so for no fee — you’ll just owe any applicable fare difference.

    Similarly, you can cancel a Southwest flight up to 10 minutes before departure and get a full refund if you booked an Anytime or Business Select Fare. Even if you booked a Wanna Get Away fare (my personal favorite as the cheapest of the lot!), you’d receive a full “refund” in the form of Southwest travel funds to be used at a later date. 

    Bottom line

    The Southwest Low Fare Calendar provides a quick and simple way to compare the cheapest daily flights across a given time period. I use the Low Fare Calendar when trying to quickly understand high-level fare trends or when I have flexible travel dates.

    Even better, flights booked through the Low Fare Calendar have no change fees and can be canceled (like all Southwest fares!) with a generous refund policy. So get to booking and working towards your Southwest Companion Pass!

    Featured image by NextNewMedia/Shutterstock.

    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)