Me again. Sorry, but I'm going to poke this thread again!
For a short while, I waffled away from shooting for this. However, I'm back into this mode and I'm pretty sure we are going to just go for it. To take full advantage of it we will have to dramatically change what has become our norm for 2018. And we'll never be able to actually take the 15 long (4-5 day) weekends that I had proposed to my wife, but "at least 6" and we've made it worthwhile. And there are still 2 chances in 2017. Anyway, there are really 2 topics I wanted to ask about. I'd better do it in 2 parts. I'll complain a little about the route map and schedule first. I've started to research SW, its routes and schedule in much more depth. The downside: in trying to leverage the CP, the options outside of SW are obviously nill, or at least won't help with the prime directive (to max the CP).
I went through our list of not-yet-visited National Parks to see how SW might help. Redwood NP? Closest SW city is 6 hours away (Sacremento). Hard to work into a 4-5 day weekend, driving 6 hours twice on top of the flights. Badlands/Wind Cave? Closest SW city is Omaha, also a drive. Sure, these are still workable AND perhaps Redwood NP isn't part of 2018 and we do Lassen instead (3 hours from Sacremento). They do have cities that ARE the closest access to a park and are reasonable. My first picks were just a little discouraging. Hotsprings is good, I think Sacramento gives us Pinnacles and Las Vegas Great Basic. Spokane and Seattle score big points.
Again, the single carrier option does restrict offerings and some of their cheaper flights have unattractive start times or length, equally unattractive layovers.
And there are many cities that are of interest on their own. We decided to go for it and see what we can accomplish. It does seem that this breaks even further from our norm, as we also now can't leverage multiple carriers for times, both convenient start times and shortest duration. Ok
Part of the 2018 plan is to do 2 international trips early and then late in the year: Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico or somewhere in the Caribbean (ha! I can finally spell that right without help!!). Doing a search (with my notable lack of SW knowledge) for various dates showed even more logistical issues. However, as
@heavenlyjane mentions, you have to time searches for right when the schedule is released. We'll be on it. I'll quote something she said, tho...
We are the type of folks who plan way ahead.
Me too! But I'm talking WAY ahead. I scheduled our Sept flights to South Africa last October, the minute the award schedule showed new availability. And I started planning a full year before that. I just prototyped flights to China in Jan 2019 by searching for 2018 awards, that are just now opening up. SW scheduling is not offered anywhere near this far in advance. Which is just the way it works, but I can't see the offerings they have for Belize or Costa Rica for next Jan. This makes me a little anxious, only because I'm not used to it.
There really isn't a question here. Just my observations with the bottom line being that we're going to go for this and commit 2018 to maximizing it as best we can. Thanks for listening. Now for part 2.