Schedule Planning Department members are used to being asked questions. Usually, it's "What's the next new city?" or "When are we going to add nonstop service from X to Y?" Of course, we can't give direct answers, as we have to protect the confidentiality of our growth plans. In fact, we've learned to tap dance our way around those types of questions better than the cast of 42nd Street. However, one question we do get asked repeatedly is why Southwest doesn't allow Customers to make reservations further in advance. I can easily (and happily) de-mystify that one! It really boils down to one, very simple reason: we don't like to confirm a reservation to a Customer, and then have to change their schedule.
As all of us know, the farther you look out into the future, the harder it is to make accurate predictions. TV Weathermen have trouble telling us what it's going to be like outside tomorrow much less ten or eleven months from now. Because the airline industry is as chaotic as the weather and in a constant state of flux, we can only predict with a high degree of certainty what our Corporate, and our Customers', schedule needs will be up to roughly six months in advance. Therefore, we publish our schedule and allow bookings only up to about 180 days in advance--six months of inventory, if you will. After we publish, we let the clock tick down, day by day, until we have about 120 days worth of inventory left to sell, at which point we publish another "block" of schedules and push the inventory back up to about 180 days. On rare occasion (and we're in one now) the inventory can drop as low as 90 days, and on even rarer occasions we'll have more than 180 days available--but the general goal is to keep between 120 to 180 days of inventory for sale. Outside of that six-month timeframe, we're free to make whatever schedule changes we need to in order to remain competitive, maintain operational excellence, and give our Customers the Freedom to Fly all over America.
If we were to allow bookings as much as a year in advance--in effect, before our plans were solid--we would have to make changes to many, if not most, of those longrange reservations. Nobody likes that outcome. For one thing, it's expensive to spend the time and resources to notify Customers whose itineraries have changed. Second, and worse yet, depending on what we changed in the schedule, we couldn't always rebook changed reservations onto replacement itineraries at similar times. Not that we haven't thought about this issue, many times, at great length. We've repeatedly examined the benefit of extending the booking "window," and each time we've found that in general, very, very few Customers would take advantage of booking flights ten or eleven months from today. So by allowing bookings further in advance than we now do, we'd be setting up a potentially very disruptive chain of events that really would not provide a significant benefit for either our Customers or our Company.
We think our existing policy strikes a great balance between offering Customers the ability to confirm their travels far enough ahead of time to suit most of their needs, and allowing Southwest to keep our costs low and our flexibility high to respond to changes in the marketplace. So remember the "120/180 rule" for future bookings on Southwest. We will usually make up to 180 days of inventory available for sale, then allow that booking window to tick down to 120 days-then "recharge" the booking window by putting another 60 days or so of salable inventory out there, taking the total days available back up to around 180. But if you keep this general rule in mind, it'll provide a good yardstick to see where Southwest stands in with respect to the booking window.
Hopefully this will help "de-mystify" planning future travel on Southwest. Keep the questions, and the comments, coming! And feel free to ask me or anyone in the Schedule Planning Department what the next new markets are going to be. We can't tell you....but we do a mean soft-shoe.
Comments
Bill,
I understand where you guys are coming from, and for myself, your reasonings make sense, but for many of the less frequent WN (erm, I mean SWA ;) ) travelers I know, many of them hate having to guess when a new schedule will come out. Sadly, many of them lose patience during a time like this when the schedule is so short because they are tired of 'looking for booking' everyday (I do it, I'll admit, I've got some summer travel that if I don't book soon I'm not going to be able to book).
Have you guys ever considered releasing new schedules on a set basis (like the first day of every fiscal quarter?) or sending advances notice to RR Update subscribers so the loyalist customers know when they can get the lowest fares? I know you DING! and send out an email after the fact, but by then the lowest fares are usually sold out...
Anyone wanting a non-official guess about schedule extension can try these two links: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3943308&postcount=20 and http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=527240 (and skip to the most recent post).
Bill, I have one other question. Most schedule extensions happen shortly after 10 AM Central Time on Thursdays. What's magic about Thursday morning?
Maybe i need to re-read that post. I am confused?? How does this save you money? I would think that the more bookings you have the more money you would have in advance. The other airlines, while barely profitable allow you to book several months in advance. Also, it is true that when you offer only a limited amount of seats, all of the low fares get sold out in a matter of minutes. Perhaps you can give me more insight. Also, i want to know... Why is it more expensive to fly from SAN-ABQ, then SAN-BWI? BWI is a bigger airport, but i just do not get it??
Francisco
It is sometimes guess work--predicting how much business you will have a few months in advance. I worked in the hotel business and noticed the same thing. I naturally wonder what it costs to schedule further ahead than five months or so.
Is there some pressing reason for making a reservation further in advance?
Bill,
I understand what SW is doing and I really appreciate you letting us know how it works, but we are already past the 120 days what is the hold up? It is really frustrating when you are trying to make plans and cannot make reservations. It is to the point that I may have to use another airline.
This major issue I have is that I've been trying to book tickets since early December as a gift for my husband. The intention is to fly to Houston for his birthday. We would go May 12 - 17. So I've been waiting well over a month for the booking dates to expand a WEEK.... and in that time I have missed out on several deals. At one point I would have been able to get the round trip for roughly $370.00 now it's up to over $400. (i'm figuring this by seeing what it would be to book a week earlier.) So as a couple who isn't swimming in the cash this is getting to be a tidge frustrating. It's either to the point where we go to another airline, greyhound, drive, or don't go at all.
Thank you so much for explaining how you open new inventory dates. The 120/180 days is a good rule of thumb. Unfortunately the inventory dates have dropped well below your rule right now and a lot of customers are getting impatient.
I love flying Southwest so I guess I'll just keep waiting while you tap dance around opening up the next inventory block.
Greetings! Okay....I'm going to try and respond to almost ALL of the replies we get on this thread. So, in order:
Matthew,
We don't mean to keep folks guessing (well....all except our competitors, of course). That was the purpose of my blog post. The problem, and the problem with releasing schedules on specific dates, is that the anticipated "schedule's ready!" dates keep changing. We don't want to promise a date that we have to change later, just as we don't want to promise a schedule that we can't reasonably expect to deliver. And, according to our Technology folks, as of right now we don't send an immediate DING! telling folks that the booking window has increased, nor do we send one to our Rapid Rewards Customers. However, both are good ideas, and I'll run them up the flagpole for you.
nsx--
10 a.m. on Thursdays has to do with the way we distribute schedules. We typically send on a Friday, it "percolates" through the various distribution venues by Monday or Tuesday, then we give everyone until Thursday to get everything correctly loaded before we pull the trigger. It's certainly not set in stone--we've opened on other days of the week. The time of day isn't in concrete, either, but 10:00 a.m. Central time is about as early as we can assume the entire continental United States is awake and open for business.
And by the way--thanks for the link! I'm a flyertalk.com member as well.
francisco:
What saves us money is by **not** having to change people's schedules that have already booked. If we published further out, the chances are significantly greater that we'd have to make changes to their itineraries, then contact the Customers, and look for alternative itineraries--with no guarantees that there would BE alternative itineraries. Dealing with any or all of those itineraries, spread across thousands of Customers that could be impacted by even a slight schedule change, is VERY expensive. We'd rather focus our attention on keeping costs low.
As for SAN-ABQ vs. SAN-BWI fares: I'm not in the Pricing and Revenue Management group, but what you're likely seeing is the difference between trying to fly on a peak day SAN-ABQ vs. an off-peak day SAN-BWI--but without specifics, I wouldn't be able to comment for certain.
Chris:
The only pressing reason for booking waaaay in advance is so folks will be able to know exactly what they've got, what they're paying, and what they can expect. It's because we want to get all three correct, from the get-go, that we don't offer advance bookings any further out than we do!
Joe:
In my post I said we occasionally will dip below 120 days down to as low as 90, and that we're in one of those periods now. The reason why is very technical and would completely bore everyone out there into watching "Oprah!" reruns, but I'll condense it to just say that the schedule's just not done yet. However, unlike previous early summer schedule releases, this one will go all the way out past the middle of August. (Anyone....does that redeem us? Anyone? Bueller?)
Erica,
PLEASE bear with us. To quote the old song from "West Side Story" --
Something' s coming, something good
If I can wait
Something's coming, I don't know what it is but it is gonna be great...
You'll have a GREAT time in Space City!
And Angie,
Refer to my reply to Joe above....I know we're below 120, it happens on rare occasion....but we'd rather have a firm plan to offer our Customers than a "hmmm, that looks right" guess and then have to change things later. Please bear with us!!!!!
Okay--that's all for now. Further replies later tonight. Thanks for caring, guys--I know some of you are frustrated, but I (1) deeply appreciate your wanting to book future travel on Southwest, and (2) and thrilled you're reading the blog!
Bill
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Bill,
Thank you for addressing the EXACT topic my Dad emailed me about, only TWO days ago. ;-)
Glad my answer was close to, although not as complete, as yours.
Will
P.S. BTW, did you say we're currently in one of those 'less than 120 periods' right now?? j/k
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