One-Way Flights on Southwest from $39 -- Many Short-Haul Routes at This Price

If you're looking for a short getaway not far from home, you can get a great deal now at Southwest. They have select one-way Fares for $39,00 for travel between Match 15ht and May 25th. (There are the typical added security/airport fees and taxes too).

They offer a variety of short-haul destinations from departure cities around the U.S. The lowest prices are not valid on Fridays or Sundays. These fares must be booked by February 11th.

To check out low-cost destinations from your nearest departure airport, click here.

15% Off Southwest Roundtrip Via PayPal™

If you have travel plans coming up between now and January 31st and might be able to use Southwest Airlines to make that trip, here's a way to save 15% more. You can register for a unique code that will be e-mailed you from PayPal™. This will take 15% off a roundtrip fare on Southwest if you pay through your PayPal™ account.

If you don't yet have an account, you can register for one for free.

Purchase must be made by December 1st, 2009 for travel through January 31st, 2010. The discount doesn't apply to senior fares, Ding specials, nor to taxes and fees.

It doesn't cost anything to make the request, so if you're at all thinking you might make a trip, it's probably worth getting the code in case. To request your free 15% code, click this link.

Southwest Airlines Sale -- from $25.00 per Flight

Have any travel plans coming up for early December or January through early February? If so, you may want to check out the sale at Southwest Airlines right now. They have fares from as low as $25.00 each way for travel between December 2nd and 16th and from January 5th to February 10th.

The fares are based on the distance you fly. Flights up to 374 miles are $25.00. 375-549 miles go for $50.00, and 550-999 miles are $75.00. Anything over 1000 miles goes for $100.

These prices don't include those airport and security fees/taxes which get tacked on to tickets.

To check out the deals and search for destinations and dates, click this link.

Two-for-One Vacations to Las Vegas or Orlando from Southwest

If you are looking to make a getaway to Vegas or Orlando, you can shave the costs with a two-for-one offer currently running at Southwest Airlines. Every second person flies free when you book a flight and hotel package to Las Vegas or Orlando. This is valid for travel into early February (with some blackouts around holiday travel), and has to be booked by September 28th.

Here are some details:
Las Vegas
Travel through 2/3/2010, five–day advance purchase required (not valid for travel Fridays and Sundays). Blackout dates are: 11/24/09 – 12/1/09 and 12/17/09 – 1/3/10. Valid from select cities.

Orlando
Travel through 2/10/2010, five–day advance purchase required (not valid for on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays). Blackout dates are: 11/24/09 – 12/1/09 and 12/17/09 – 1/3/10.

They also have some hotel specials where you can get a free night at certain spots if you stay a certain number of nights.

Traveling together, you can score some great savings. To take a look, click this link.

Two-for-One Vacations to Las Vegas from Southwest

Planning a getaway to Vegas? You'd certainly enjoy sharing the fun and games with someone special, no? Well, you can make that happen more affordably using a special promotion by Southwest Airlines. You can book it till August 10th, and it's good for stays from mid-August until early January.

Unfortunately, it's not valid for departures from Providence, Manchester, Long Island/Islip, Albany, Buffalo, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C./Dulles. But readers from other parts of the country can certainly take advantage.

Friends fly free, stay free and even tour free. There are flight + hotel 3-night packages starting at $33 per person, per night (plus airport and security fees on the air travel).

They have a ton of hotels/casinos from which you can choose to stay, at a variety of prices, so you can style the kind of stay you want. If you want to add a tour of Las Vegas or the Hoover Dam, the second person gets free admission to those too.

Book by August 10th at 6:00 p.m. Central and travel between August 17th and January 7th, 2010. Blackout dates are 9/3 – 9/7; 11/24 – 12/1; 12/17 – 1/3/2010. The special offer is not valid for travel on Fridays and Sundays.

To check out more and see if you can create a great Vegas package for two, click this link.

Southwest Airlines Sale -- from $30.00 per Flight

Southwest Airlines is having a "Wanna Get Away" sale for tickets booked through tomorrow, July 8th, for travel between September 9th and November 18th. There are tons of cities available with flights as low as $30.00 each way.

And these are available by one-way purchase (not simply part of a roundtrip), so if you have reasons to tack two or three destinations together you can assemble a great collection of fares and really save.

Sale prices are good every day except Fridays or Sundays.

There are so many departure/destinations available on this sale that it would make this post very long. Just let me say it's worth checking out if you have any travel plans coming up (or a trip you'd like to make).

Security/airport fees and taxes are additional. To check out all the sale prices available and search for dates, click this link.

Free Companion Flight to Orlando When You Book a Flight + Hotel Package on Southwest

If Orlando, Universal Studios® or Walt Disney World® are in your vacation thoughts, you might want to take a look at an offer being run by Southwest Airlines. They are offering a free companion ticket for anyone who purchases a flight + hotel package through them. And since you probably wouldn't be heading there alone, chances are good you have someone who could use the free ticket to save you both money on the cost of vacationing.

And if you're traveling as a family, every second person flies free, so if four of you are traveling, you only need to pay for two. If six are together, three of them would be free companion tickets.

There are a variety of hotel special packages, including Walt World Resort® discounts, Universal Orlando® Resort discount, a couple of Sheraton® hotels, a Best Western®, Quality Inn® or Comfort Inn® too.

The special packages have to be booked by June 21st. The travel period is through October 30th (Blackout dates: 6/29 - 7/6/09). Some of the hotel offers have some other date restrictions. The offer is valid for travel Monday- Thursday.

The site also shows special offers for buy one, get one Free 2-Park Unlimited Admission Tickets, valid for Universal Studios® and Universal's Islands of Adventure® theme parks.

So if Florida is a potential vacation consideration, click this link and see what you can save.

p.s. As a reminder for anyone who wants to save even a bit more, you can get back 3% of what you spend if you use ebates as a portal to go to Southwest. If you're not an ebates user yet and want to learn more, click the info in the lower part of the left column in this blog.

Traveling to/from New Orleans or Salt Lake City? Promotional Codes for 50% Off at Southwest

If you have travel plans that call for you to travel to New Orleans or to Salt Lake City, you may want to pay attention. If you live near New Orleans or Salt Lake City, you definitely want to pay attention.

Southwest Airlines has unleashed a couple of promotional codes that get you 50% off their "Wanna Get Away" fares either departing or arriving at one of these two cities.

The promotional codes (FLYMSY for New Orleans and FLYSLC for Salt Lake City) are valid if you book flights by November 18th. The travel dates for your flights must be between December 3rd through February 11th. However, December 18th through January 4th are blacked out from being part of any travel valid for this half-price discount. Roundtrip travel is required for discount tickets, and taxes/fees are not discounted.

More information is available for each city at the Southwest Airlines website.

Here's the link for the New Orleans offer.

Here's the link for the Salt Lake City offer.

Southwest Airlines $29 Short-Haul Flights

Southwest Airlines has announced a list of short-haul flights for which they'll charge just $29 for a one-way ticket. Now, these won't get you cross country or anything, but they might make a short trip more affordable.

Here's a list of some city pairs:
Austin - Houston
Birmingham - Nashville
Birmingham - New Orleans
Boise - Spokane
Chicago - Indianapolis
Corpus Christi - Houston
Dallas - Tulsa
Houston - San Antonio
Jacksonville - Tampa Bay

Fares are valid for travel through October 30th, require 21-day advance purchase, and security/airport fees are additional.

To see the fares, all restrictions and book flights, here's the link.

Southwest Airlines $49 Short-Haul Special - Lots of Cities!

Southwest Airlines has a fare offer of $49 each way for many of its short haul flights Tuesdays and Wednesdays between February 19 and June 25, 2008. You have to book by February 21st with a 14-day advance purchase. They have a long list of city combinations available. These won't get you cross-country but for some shorter destinations these might come in quite handy.

A sampling of $49 flights:
Buffalo to Baltimore/Washington
Chicago to Long Island/New York
Philadelphia to Columbus
Dallas to Kansas City
San Jose to Reno/Tahoe
Los Angeles to Las Vegas
San Diego to Phoenix

The list is much, much longer... click here for the full offer.

Skype, Woot, Ding!

The internet has opened up all sorts of ways to save, and there's three I want to point out to you.

The first is Skype. It's a software package that allows you to make video-phone-calls to other people over your computer. You and the receiver both need to have webcams to be able to see each other (you can make audio calls with just microphones if you don't have a webcam, but what makes Skype so much fun is the video capability). The software is available for free when you click on 'download' at this link. The set-up of your account is fairly straightforward and then you can easily search for friends/relatives who may already have Skype addresses.

My experience with the software is that it's just a bit finicky. Sometimes when you open Skype, it may have lost some settings for your webcam or mike (I've made calls where the other party couldn't hear me, for example, because the microphone setting changed to other than the mike in my webcam). But as long as you check the Skype settings before you place a call and make sure they're set properly, it works fine.

The ability to video-call people around the world is awesome! Whether it were free or not, isn't it an amazing time to be able to see a relative from half a world away while you talk? And the fact that the call is free if you both have Skype makes it doubly awesome!!!!

I've been able to talk with and see my wife while on a business trip to Japan -- in a situation like that, Skype is also advantageous because you can see whether the person you want to call is on-line at the moment. On prior business trips I would waste time and money calling the hotel only to find out she wasn't available. This way, I could be sure and it made the calling process much less frustrating.

I've been able to video-chat with relatives in Europe for long periods without having to worry about the bill piling up too, which is awfully nice!

Skype also allows you to place inexpensive calls to non-Skype numbers (about a penny and a half per minute), so you can also use it as an inexpensive long-distance service too. You pre-pay some money into an account for credits if you want to use this type of calling -- but there's no obligation to use it for that -- if you just want the free computer-to-computer phone calling, you don't need to pay anything.

For me the ability to have accessible video-calling and have it for free makes this an unbelievable deal. So if you want to add this great technological advance into your life, Skype makes it easy.

Next is woot. What? No, woot! OK, I had never even heard of the word before a young friend of mine told me it was a new way of saying "hooray" or "wow!" And there's a site called woot.com which has a unique way of offering great deals. While most on-line stores offer lots of items in various categories, woot sells only one item each day. It goes on sale at midnight, and they sell it until they sell out. Sometimes the bargains are such that the items sell out before the sun rises. It's a unique approach but they have a fun way of displaying the item, often writing a poem or other creative way to talk about it. If the idea appeals to you, check them out.

Finally, ding! That bell that went off is a small download you can put on your computer from Southwest Airlines. Every so often, they will send out limited-time special offers for airfare -- when you register, you can choose up to ten airports for them to send you specials. If you have this downloaded to your system, it makes a ding sound that sounds like the bell on a plane when a stewardess is called or the seat-belt light goes off. You click on the ding icon and the offer pops up. The software doesn't cost anything, and it's a way to be informed of some travel deals as they happen. Here's the link.

Southwest doesn't get covered by companies like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz, so these are deals you might not otherwise find. Southwest is a discount airline with low-frills service to maximize the low fares (such as no pre-assigned seating), so you might not get all the bells and whistles -- but even the major airlines have cut back many of the bells and whistles anyway.

So these may be three new words in your vocabulary -- but they can be new ways of finding great deals too.