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Daily Deal—Southwest Systemwide Sale from $78

Welcome to the reidsguides.com daily travel deal for March 17, 2005.

Southwest is having one of its regular Systemwide Sales--that means roundtrip airfares between any of the 60 cities it serves costs between $78 and $298.

Maybe you live in LA and want to spend a weekend in Vegas. That'll set you back only $78--leaving plenty of extra cash for you to lose on Texas Hold 'Em (which is a lot harder than those B-list celebrities on TV make it look).

Or perhaps you're here in New York and are tired of this March that can't make up its mind between balmy spring and freezing snow--so you head out to Islip to catch a flight down the Tampa, Florida for $98, roundtrip.

The great thing about Southwest--and other low no-frill airlines--is that all tickets are sold as one-way--which is another way of saying that one-way tickets cost precisely half that of round-trip ones.

That might not seem special, unless you realize that, on traditional airlines, the one-way price is often actually higher than the round-trip price (the reason why is far from logical, and is just one more example of how poorly the major carriers run their businesses).

But since on Southwest you aren't locked into making a roundtrip, you can bop around the country like a pinball. Let's say you live in Philly. You could fly to LA (that costs $79), rent a car to drive north up Route 1 along the sunny California coast--perhaps taking a few days to get some Sideways-style wine tasting action in Santa Barbara--and end up in the City by the Bay, San Francisco. Then you can just drop of the wheels and hope a flight home from Oakland (that's another $99--for an airfare total of just $178, car rental and cases of wine not included).

Travel dates on this sale are wide open through September 2, and you have until April 21 to book--but you must buy tickets at least 14 days before you plan to leave. By the way: I said this sale covers all cities Southwest serves, but that's not quite true. There is one airport that's not covered in this sale: Orange County, CA (The O.C. never takes part in Southwest sales, because its airport is tiny and has extremely tight limits on its traffic loads).

To get more info or to find out the fares from your hometown, head to our website ReidsGuides.com, click on the transcript for this Daily Deal, and follow the link. That’s www.reidsguides.com.

Until tomorrow’s deal, thanks for listening.