Southwest Companion Pass
So what's this companion pass anyway?
It is only the best deal in domestic travel. Even if you tend to avoid Southwest because you have a different preferred airline or just don't like Southwest because paying junk fees to airlines for check-in bags is just your thing, there's no denying the outsize value of the companion pass.
For the low, low price of earning 135,000 Rapid Rewards miles in one year, you get the reward of adding a companion to all your SW flights for FREE. Yes, you read that right. FREE. So let's break this down.
Earning the Companion Pass
135,000 miles sounds like a lot. And it is. But conveniently, SW offers 4 credit cards - 2 business and 2 personal - of which any two will easily net you the required miles. As of this writing, each personal card has a bonus offer of 85K miles and each business card as a bonus offer of 80K miles. You will need to not have opened no more than 4 cards in the last two years to be eligible for any of these cards, so keep that in mind.
You qualify for the companion pass as soon as you earn the 135,000 miles and the pass is valid for the year that you qualify, as well as the entire following year. So the strategy should be to get the first card late in the year and meet the minimum spend in January (this is VERY important - if you meet earn the bonus in Dec, your annual clock will reset. You won't lose the miles, but starting January you will have to earn 135,000 miles all over again in the new year to qualify for the companion pass). Once you earn the bonus for the first card, you should get the second one and earn the bonus on that so that by Feb or March you can qualify for the companion pass. This means you get the pass for the rest of the year as well as all of the following year, maximizing your ability to get free travel.
Getting Value
Let's look at some award options to understand the power of this deal. As of this writing, here are some of the routes and their associated miles on Southwest:
RDU - SEA One week return trip for July 2024
18,792 Outgoing
20,335 Return
39,127 TOTAL
LAX - DEN One week return trip for August 2024
6,901 Outgoing
4,160 Return
11,061 TOTAL
AUS - NYC One week return trip for Sep 2024
10,685 Outgoing
10,685 Return
21,370 TOTAL
This means that you and your companion can do the above three trips completely for free and still have 63K miles left to spend, which can easily be two more free trips. This is crazy value for the $300 that you will shell out in annual fee for the two cards. Not to mention that you get 2 free check-in bags with each flight.
However, remember that this is a deal only if you are able to pay off your credit cards in full every month. If you tend to carry balances on your credit cards, this will be almost guaranteed to cost you more than just paying for airfare.
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