Many travelers have creative ways or a personal trick for finding a cheap plane ticket. Some swear by their favorite flight aggregator site while others spend multiple hours or even days clicking between different ones to find that deal.
Still others insist that specific days and times (usually booking on a Sunday and traveling on a Tuesday) will get you the biggest deals.
Related: How the CEO of a Low-Cost Airline Tries to Keep Prices Low
While all of those tricks work from time to time, airlines themselves often launch clear-out sales in which many of its flights are sold at very low prices for those willing to book fast and commit to travel a few months in advance. In advance of Labor Day, both JetBlue (JBLU) -) and Alaska Airlines (ALK) -) held three-day sales in which one could score cross-country flights for as low as $40.
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Here is what you need to do to score a cheap flight with Southwest
The latest airline to launch a clear-out sale is the Dallas-based budget airline Southwest (LUV) -). Called the "Week Of Wow" sale, the promotion gives anyone who books between Sept. 26 and 28 50% off most routes the airline flies.
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To take advantage, one should select the flight as usual on the site and then add the WOW50 code when entering payment details. Travel dates need to fall between Oct. 24, 2023 and March 6, 2024 while there are also numerous blackout periods — naturally, Thanksgiving weekend but also Dec. 21 to 23, Dec. 26 to 30 and Jan. 1 to 2 as well as the weekend of Jan. 6 and 7. Certain popular weekends in February have also been blacked out.
For those thinking of catching some sun in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, the entire holiday period from Dec. 15 to Jan. 8 as well as Feb. 23 to 27 have been excluded from the promotion.
The good thing usually not offered in such promotions is that one can change one's travel date or get a refund later if one books too early and then finds that the dates no longer work. For those booking at the lowest "Wanna Get Away" fare, the refund will come in the form of a travel voucher without an expiration date rather than cash.
'This clearly reflects a bigger industry trend'
While Southwest has kept its marketing of the sale on the down low and let customers stumble into it themselves, the long period to which the sale applies is a sign that the airline is struggling to sell seats, particularly domestic ones, after a tumultuous year of industry-wide demand and understaffing and a widespread booking system outage over the holiday season.
"While airlines offer sales and promotions with some frequency, it's pretty rare to see a 50% off sale that's valid for such a long travel period," Ben Schlappig of the One Mile At A Time blog opined on the promotion. "This clearly reflects a bigger industry trend. It seems people have gotten 'revenge travel' out of their system ... and business travel also isn't fully recovered, so now we're seeing US airlines struggle with just about everything other than long haul flying."
