I'm seriously starting to get nervous about next week
I looked at the last week in September, departing and returning on a Friday, which are the days we would most likely be travelling, and YIKES!!!...almost $600 round-trip PER PERSON!!
Are you serious?? If we decided to do Saturday-Saturday instead, it would only be $500 per person, with a 3-hour layover on the way down and a 3.5-hour layover on the way home...fun times
.
At these prices and schedules, it's not looking too promising for a round-trip on SWA for this trip. I have 37K points which should (hopefully) be enough to cover one-way tickets for the three of us...but now I'm not so sure. In the past, a one-way fare in October was around $180 on the high end. Now I am seeing the LOWEST fares in September at $195.
My dad has offered to drive us to Detroit so we can fly non-stop on Delta (8pm flight) and the total cost for that flight would be $488. We could take the same flight but catch it at 5pm out of Grand Rapids, FLY to Detroit and sit for two hours before it departs at 8pm to Orlando, and it would cost $545. My first thought was the extra $57 to fly out of our local airport was no big deal, but my dad offered to take us (free, won't even let me pay for gas!) and I HATE the take-offs and landings so the idea of a 2-hour drive vs. a 2-hour layover sounds so much better to me. Either way, we'd have to pick up the kids from school at 3pm and head straight to the airport, either GRR (15 minutes away) or DTW (2 hours away). The girls would be exhausted and I think they would be more likely to catch a snooze on the 2-hour car ride to Detroit vs a 2-hour layover in the airport.
Oh, man....this is so nerve-wracking....I just know that if SWA doesn't come through with a schedule or prices that don't work, I will end up pulling the trigger with Delta and once I do that, it's a done deal since their cancellation and change policy is...well...there are none. I'll also have to decide if we want to drive to Detroit (which, incidentally, we have done several times so it's no big deal for us) or go out of GR. I guess I will see what happens....