The Southwest hack you might want to try

In case you are not aware there is currently a way to save big time when flying Southwest Airlines. It is a bit of a “travel hack” so there is no telling when this method might no longer be available but if you can take advantage of it now you could potentially save yourself hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands of Rapid Rewards points.

Basically, what you do is book a flight with the intention of changing your flight to a more expensive flight on a different date. I believe you must keep the origin and destination airports the same along with the fare class but you can change the flight at no additional cost even if there is a difference in fares.

I just went through an entire booking to confirm that it still works and I had no issues.

I booked a nonstop flight from Tucson to Houston on June 22. I booked the flight with points and the price came out to 13,577 points. I then changed my flight to June 4 (within 30 days of June 22) and I changed it to a much more expensive flight going for 32,025 Rapid Rewards. That means that the flight was 2.3 times more expensive than my original flight!

But when I advanced through the booking process for the change I was given the option to make the change free of charge!

So I was able to save myself 18,448 points! If you were booking a cash booking you could have your savings in the form of cash.

So to take advantage of this there are basically two steps you need to make.

Step one

Book a Southwest flight between June 20 and July 17.

Step two

Change your flight date to a date 30 days before or after your original date.

Then just proceed through the standard change process.

Once again, this travel hack could disappear anytime so don’t wait too long if you want to take advantage of it. But this is one of the easiest ways I’ve seen to save hundreds of dollars on flights so even if you don’t fly Southwest you might want to give it a shot!