After years of going it alone, selling its tickets only on Southwest.com and through its app, Southwest Airlines broke tradition by finally listing its fares on Google Flights in May. Now, the carrier is adding another airfare search tool to the list.
The popular flight booking site Kayak.com officially added Southwest flights on Monday, giving travelers yet another way to search for and compare Southwest flight prices to its competitors in one place. An airline representative confirmed that expansion to Kayak, calling it a pilot partnership.
As of publication, we're not seeing Southwest fares expand to other travel sites likes Expedia, Skyscanner, or any other online travel agencies or search engines.
While we encourage travelers to start each and every airfare search with Google Flights, Kayak remains one of the most popular alternatives out there. And now its fans will get a better look at all their options – while Southwest benefits from another way to lure in customers.
Southwest fares appear just like any other airline's tickets on the Kayak platform.
Previously, Kayak only listed Southwest fares to corporate travelers using its dedicated business booking platform. This is a major expansion, putting Southwest fares right in front of millions of additional flyers searching through Kayak.
“This is a great development for travelers,” said Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak, said in a statement. “We first started showing Southwest in 2022 to Kayak for Business customers. We’re thrilled to expand that relationship to the millions of leisure travelers who use Kayak.”
You'll see exactly what's included with each of Southwest's fares when clicking on a trip you're interested in. And much like Google Flights, clicking a Southwest fare on Kayak just redirects you to book directly with Southwest.com.
And that's the point: Kayak isn't an online travel agency like Expedia, websites that act as a middle-man and actually book your flights for you. Just like Google Flights, it's a metasearch engine – more of a marketplace to search for flights. And as Southwest steadily expands to display its fares in more places, Kayak is a natural next step.
It's the latest sign of the massive ongoing transformation at the popular (but decreasingly profitable) U.S. airline.
Expanding into Google Flights overnight in late May was its first concrete pivot. Forcing travelers to search and book directly through Southwest.com was a core part of its business model, creating more customer loyalty while limiting the costs of distributing fares to those websites … and the risk of customers booking with another carrier that might actually be cheaper.
But travelers can now compare Southwest flight prices directly with the other airlines using Google Flights – and now Kayak, too. Other even bigger changes are on tap onboard Southwest jets.
The famously no-frills airline is adding in-seat power and expanding onboard Wi-Fi. In perhaps the biggest change in the airline's history, Southwest recently announced its plans to ditch its controversial open-seating model and begin assigning seats sometime in 2025. Extra legroom seating is also in the works for its entire fleet of Boeing 737s.
In the search for more customers and profitability, Southwest is starting to look like the other major U.S. airlines. But in order for that to work, they need to sell their flights just like those other carriers, too.
Bottom Line
Southwest Airlines fares are now available to search on Kayak.com, giving more travelers another easy way to find their fares.
After years of going it alone on Southwest.com and and its app, the carrier has partnered with Google Flights and now Kayak. It's all part of some major changes Southwest is making to reinvent itself.