Awhile back, I wrote about Southwest’s cancellation policy, which is in my opinion the best in the industry. Basically you can change or cancel any Southwest flight at any time before you fly, and you’ll receive Southwest credit back to your account. If you want to fly a more expensive flight, you’ll only be charged the difference in fares (with no extra change fees), and if your flight is LESS expensive, you’ll receive a CREDIT back to your account
Monitoring your reservations
It’s always a good idea to monitor your upcoming reservations. In addition to Southwest flights, you should still monitor your upcoming flights even on airlines where you have no status and where you’d have to pay to change anything.
If the airline changes the schedule, you may be able to get a more advantageous routing at no additional charge. Taking advantage of this is how I got us 16 extra hours in Rome for FREE! It’s also how we changed our 3-stop flight on an angle-flat seat to a more direct route for our round the world trip (free of charge once first class space opened up)
Changing a Southwest reservation
I am planning on going to the upcoming Family Travel for Real Life conference in April, in Orlando. This morning, I was checking my reservation and noticed that the flight prices were (slightly) lower. So, going to my Trip page from My Account, I hit “Change”
Going through the wizard, I picked the EXACT SAME FLIGHTS, and at the end, came to this screen
I could have picked different flights, and I looked at a few other options, but the only other possibility was a Friday morning flight that leaves at 5:30 a.m. and a 5:30 a.m. flight in a city 2 hours away is NOT my idea of fun!! Yes, in this case the savings is only $8, but $8 is better than nothing, and it came for no additional price other than a few minutes work! Always monitoring your Southwest flights for updated prices is a good habit to get into!
Have you ever used Southwest’s updated change policy to save money on a flight?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
The title is extremely SW didn’t pay you to take the same flight you still paid $231 to take it.
Thank you for the post. Being new to this I did not think of checking my booked flights for price changes.on SW. My wife and I each just saved $136!!
Wow – that is awesome! I’m glad it was helpful and that you were able to save that much money on your flights!
I have one of the rapid reward cards and use the points I earn on it it for all of my flights. Fabulous! I have had to cancel and change flights and have absolutely had wonderful service from Southwest with these issues. I have also gotten my fair lowered when I noticed that the price goes down.
I can’t thank you enough for your fabulous information and advice! You are the BEST!!
You don’t have to write something everyday. Consider writing nothing, rather than posting garbage like this. You got a small refund on your flight. I’ll keep this in mind and try to remember to ignore search links that lead to your blog.
LOL thanks for giving me a laugh!
well, that’s one way to look at it, putting a brave “lol” face on the wave of howls you’re now getting (and deservedly so) for a severely misleading title. Unfortunate too, as the initial premise of your essay, that Southwest on the surface has the most generous change policy in the business is for the most part quite true (and good for you that it worked out to a small refund in this case)
In fairness though, a post like that would need to note that Southwest more often than not severely inflates their close-in fares, so that while you might not pay a change-fee, you’ll still get plastered with a much higher fare (and often more so than airlines with $50 same day change fees)….
I too have been one to look forward to your messages in my in-box — experience suggesting that despite no substance on the titles, it usually was worth the effort to click it….
NOT today. (and you fritter away much good will in the process)
If you booked early bird though you would lose that correct ?
No. Early Bird purchases carry over as long as you were logged in and chose “change”.
Clickbait. Note to self: Points with a Crew is no bueno, now on my not worth a visit list.
I am also going that this is a Clickbait article.
Clickbait, agree with comments above.
Clickbait garbage, consider changing the title to something along the lines of “Southwest refunded me for the same flight” then it wouldn’t be as misleading.
Absolute junk. You are now on my do not click list.
I agree with everyone else. What a worthless post.
My favorite Southwest story is about a day I volunteered on an oversold flight. I boarded, they took me off, and I got the compensation voucher. It turns out they were oversold by exactly one. But the man who was supposed to get my seat had exited past security. For some reason, he didn’t make it back to board on time. So, they let me take my original flight. I got a much worse seat, but the voucher for the original fare plus $200 was in my pocket!
Ed – that is a hilarious story!
I heard Dan Miller is only Gold status at Hilton. What a loser! He posts articles with misleading titles. He also is only Silver status with Marriott. DOUBLE LOSER! Hi, I’m Dan Miller. I book flights on southwest. I don’t like assigned seating. Look at me!
LOL! Yeah Dan, have to agree w/ Ted Danson here. Kind of a hogwash article here. Little disappointed in you.
Literally all the time.
I am new to this blog so a little late to this post. Is the title mis-leading? Sure. Was this helpful to me? A big YES. As a family of 5, I will take every $8 I can get. Thanks. Dan
Glad you liked it Rachael! Those $8 savings can add up!
I agree this feels a bit click bait’ish. What I’ve noticed is once respected bloggers have fallen into the trap of posting junk just to post. You would have never seen this years ago but there are so many people blogging now that they probably feel like they have to stoop to the National Enquirer type of junk. Respected guys like Gary Leff from View from the Wing used to post really helpful and insightful articles. Now he post mostly junk articles and stories.
Also, most bloggers now just get lazy and repost the same article and steal and copy from the first blogger that posts it. No originality at all.
Hopefully this trend doesn’t continue.