Question about flight pricing

[Iron Mike Sharpe]

Trying to decide on how to handle this situation:


I'm 95% sure I'm going to take two trips to Vegas this year.

I currently have 34,000 Southwest points and trying to decide if I want to use my points for this trip and pay cash for the November trip, or pay cash for the March trip and use points for the November trip.

I'm sure the decision here is probably pretty small.

If I were to book my March Southwest flight right now, it would cost me $400 round trip plus the taxes and fees, or it would cost about 24,000 of my SWA points.

I believer the November trip is either 1 or 2 weekends before Thanksgiving. The question I have is will airfare be cheaper now or in November? Or does it matter. What do some of the more experienced fliers think about this?



For the March trip, I will have a free room + free meal credits for three of the nights, the other two nights I am going to stay at Flamingo cheaply.  In November, I will be paying for everything. 

[secondcor521]

I would use points first and cash later, but not only because of pricing questions.

It's possible that your points expire before the second trip.
It's possible that you earn more points before the second trip.
It's possible that the second trip gets canceled.
It's possible that the second trip will be cheaper to pay cash for than the first trip.

You may want to take a look at the Southwest Chase Visa promotion mentioned on another thread here.  It's possible you could accumulate the equivalent of 8 RT Southwest tickets by this summer.

[Returnoftheyeti]

Southwest has no change fees.  For points or for cash.  So if the price is good, buy now.  If it goes lower, "change" your flight to the cheaper one.  I do this all the time. 

If you use points, the difference goes back to you account.  If you use cash, Southwest holds the money as credit towards future travel.