Southwest Airlines Jumps Into Fare War With JetBlue

The thing with airlines is that if you don’t pay that much attention to the industry, they all just sort of seem the same.

Yes, every airline would balk at that statement and point to their in-house values and the ways in which they stand out.

They’re not wrong about this, by the way, but unless you’ve signed up for a loyalty program at a given airline, as long as a plane gets you where you need to go, it’s likely fine unless they lose your luggage or something.

At the end of the day, if you’re pursuing Travelocity or Google Flights, everything about an airline’s marketing and public facing identity gets stripped away, and it all comes down to whichever flight is cheapest.

Whenever any given airline makes a special promotion or offers a sale, all their competitors will have no choice but to respond in kind, as they can’t afford to let anyone get too far ahead of the pack.

Southwest Can’t Take This Lying Down

So as you are likely aware, Southwest (LUV) didn’t have a great holiday.

Thanks to a combination of bad weather, worker shortages and allegedly outdated software, Southwest began canceling and delaying thousands of flights (including 23% of its flights on December 26 alone), and at one point it was scrapping nearly 2,500 each day. It’s been estimated that the debacle may cost the company up to $825 million. It already earned both the ire of the President and a number of lawsuits.

The root of Southwest’s problems, if you ask its employees, is that the company’s new management is allegedly not spending enough to upgrade its badly outdated software or to recruit enough new employees to make up for the people who retired during the pandemic.

At the same time that Southwest was getting roasted on social media, JetBlue (JBLU) leapt in with a January sale, offering a wide variety of cheap flights between major cities, sometimes for as little as $49.

So even if Southwest, as a company, might prefer to go hide under a rock until people move on from their holiday fiasco, they just can’t afford to let JetBlue look like they’re the place to score discount tickets at the start of the year.

Is January The Best Month To Plan A Trip?

Most industries deal with some sort of post-holiday slump, as people have spent their money and now need to save while they enjoy their new consumer goods. But the travel industry tends to have an especially slow start to the year, as many people (and not just Southwest customers) aren’t exactly pumped to get back on a plane after visiting their families and spending the holidays arguing over every little thing.

So in an effort to try to drum up any business, many airlines introduce some of their cheapest flights all year. JetBlue was first at bat this year, but now Southwest has revealed their own array of discounts.

You will have to book the tickets directly through Southwest’s sale page, and all sales must be completed by January 12. All sales are for one-way tickets, though if you look around the Low Fare Calendar you might be able to build a cheap round-trip experience.

All dates are for between January 31 and May 17, and certain blackout dates apply, and of course, prices vary by any number of factors.

All sales are for Wanna Get Away fares, which are nonrefundable, but can be applied toward future travel as long as reservations are canceled at least 10 minutes prior to scheduled departure, notes The Points Guy.

That said, here’s a number of cheap flights that we noticed while poking around the Fare Calendar. As always, your cheapest option will tend to be on Tuesday or Wednesday.