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Holiday Travel: Southwest airfare sale tested

L.A. Times Signs of the Season You’re proud of yourself because you have your Thanksgiving flights booked, but what about Christmas and New Year’s? Southwest Airlines is in the final days of their Holiday Travel Sale. I tested a few of the fares on Kayak, FareCompare and SideStep. Here are my results.

Deal or no Deal? I tested the Southwest deal against a few other travel websites. For Burbank to Oakland, Southwest came up with $139 round-trip on December 20, 2007 – January 3, 2008, but Kayak found it for $122 on JetBlue from Long Beach. When I searched Los Angeles to Phoenix December 20, 2007 – January 2, 2008, Southwest had the cheapest price at $119 round-trip vs. SideStep’s low price of $129 on Delta. Finally, I tested Los Angeles to Seattle just around Christmas December 24 – 27, 2007. The fare was up as high as $407 round-trip on Southwest but only $328 via FareCompare.

Tip: You’re going to get the best deals if you can be flexible with your departure date and stay longer.

Sample one-way Southwest sale fares:
(before taxes and fees)

Los Angeles & Burbank, CA
$59 to/from Oakland, CA
$49 to/from Phoenix, AZ
(SWA $119 round-trip, SideStep found it for $129 on Delta)
$59 to/from Sacramento, CA
$59 to/from San Jose, CA

Los Angeles, CA
$99 to/from Albuquerque, NM
$99 to/from El Paso, TX
$86 to/from Tucson, AZ

Burbank, CA
$99 to/from Seattle/Tacoma, WA

When: For the Southwest Holiday Travel Sale, book by October 29 for travel December 20, 2007 through January 6, 2008.

Contact: Southwest Airlines, (800) 435-9792

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26, 2007 at 1:51 pm by Jen Leo and is filed under Arizona, News, Tips & Advice, Northern California, Pacific Northwest, San Francisco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.