Ding! puts you on standby for sale fares

Have you ever heard of a one-hour airfare sale or a sale that’s announced in the morning and valid until 8 that night?

Although one can imagine an airline trying to sell cut-rate tickets on short notice, it’s hard to figure out how they would alert the public.

Southwest Airlines, a source of much innovation in travel, has just solved the problem. Its short-duration sales program is known as Ding! This refers to the tinny “ding” sound some computers make to announce incoming e-mail.

Users go to the Southwest site, www.southwest.com, and download the Ding! program. (Note that the program works only with Windows 98SE, Windows ME and Windows XP and does not serve Macintosh or Linux computers.) They specify a gateway city, usually their hometown. Immediately, a tiny icon -- the tail of a Southwest Airlines plane -- appears at the bottom of their desktop screen.

Users who keep their computers online all day are ready for announcements.

When Southwest has a one-hour, three-hour or five-hour sale to announce from your favorite city, the Ding! program intones the sound. Simultaneously, it places a little envelope over the tiny icon of the airplane’s tail.

If you’re within a few feet of the computer, you hear it. If you’re away from the computer when the sound occurs but glance at the screen a short time later, you see the envelope. By clicking on the icon, you access the announcement of a special, short-duration sale.

Recently, I learned of a $32 airfare that was available until 8 p.m. It would allow me to book a Southwest flight from Long Island Islip, N.Y., to Baltimore. The day before, I learned about a fare of $33 available for only three hours to people wanting to fly from Chicago Midway to St. Louis. It’s a boon to cost-conscious fliers.

Southwest -- virtually alone among the airlines -- refuses to permit its fares to appear on the listings of the major airfare-booking engines, including Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. It won’t permit its fares to appear on such comparison sites as SideStep or Kayak.

By preventing the interlopers from entering the picture, and by avoiding the fees that it would otherwise have to pay for these services, Southwest maintains one of the lowest airfare structures in America. It provides reliable transportation at the lowest possible rate.

Its mere presence has forced other airlines to eliminate the forbidding figures they used to quote and to make air travel affordable to people of limited income.