One of my favorite travel hacks is using points to fly free on Southwest Airlines. Southwest is a great airline for domestic travel, even to Hawaii! The airline also flies to various places in Latin America and the Caribbean. Many times Southwest has the lowest fares for flights, especially if you consider baggage fees for other airlines. Southwest allows all passengers to check two bags for free – that’s unheard of in the industry.
Another benefit of flying on Southwest is being able to change or cancel your flights for free. If the fare goes down, you simply change your flight online. You are issued a credit that never expires if you purchased with cash. If you used points, they are refunded back into your account and can be used later. When I have a Southwest flight booked, I re-check fares every Tuesday. I usually change a flight two or three times, saving points or cash each time.
“Secret” Southwest Hack
One huge hack is the ability to completely change an itinerary when flight schedules change. You can book the cheapest flight to a destination, even if it’s not the day or time you want. If the schedule changes, Southwest will allow you to change your flight to another time or date. The beauty of this is that you can then select a much more expensive (in cash or points) flight on the day or time you really wanted! There are two rules. First , the date must be within 30 days before or after the original flight. Second, the origin and destination city must stay the same.
An example may help explain this hack better. Let’s say you are flying from Dallas to Los Angeles. You want to fly to LA on a Friday and back to Dallas on a Monday, but those flights are super expensive. So you book a cheap Southwest flight for the previous Tuesday to LA and a return flight to Dallas for Thursday. Then you sit back and wait to get the email that a schedule changes happens, usually about 4-6 weeks prior to travel. Once the schedule change occurs, you can then change the flights to Friday and returning Monday for the same price in cash or points that you paid for the cheaper flight option!
Word of Warning
One huge warning – a schedule change does not always happen. Some of my Southwest flights in the past few years have had a schedule change, but there’s no guarantee. If you want to play this game, the best course of action is to have another flight booked for the days/times you actually want as well. It’s best to do this with points rather than tie up cash. So how do you get a lot of points to fly free on Southwest? Read on!
Earning Southwest Rapid Reward Points
Note: If you apply for a credit card on any of the links provided below, I may receive a referral bonus.
Credit Card Options
Points on Southwest are called Rapid Reward points. There are a lot of ways to earn points to fly free on Southwest. Obviously, you can fly on Southwest using tickets you purchased in cash to collect points. But the most lucrative way is to sign up for a Southwest personal credit card. Currently, you can get 50,000 Southwest points for spending $1,000 on the card within 3 months. This is a super low spend requirement. See my post Travel for Free in 6 Easy Steps for instructions on how to use credit cards to pay your usual monthly expenses to earn points for free travel.
In addition, you can apply for a Southwest business credit card. Depending on which card you choose, you will get 60,000-80,000 points for spending $3,000-5,000 on the card within 3 months. Think you can’t qualify for business credit cards because you don’t own a business? You are probably wrong! See my post How to Qualify for Business Credit Cards to learn more.
Another credit card option is my favorite credit card, Chase Sapphire Preferred. This card currently gives you 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after a $4,000 spend in three months. These points can be transferred on a 1:1 ratio to Southwest, effectively becoming Rapid Rewards points. The beauty of Chase Ultimate Rewards points is that they can also be transferred to other airlines like United and hotels like Marriott and Hyatt. You can also book travel directly through their own portal.
Also, if you have a a Southwest personal credit card or a Southwest business credit card, you can send a customized referral link to your friends and family. If they apply for the card and get approved, you receive 20,000 points for each one up to 100,000 points in a year. This works great for couples. One person can get the card, refer their significant other and get the 20,000 points, and you both get the reward points after making the minimum spend!
Hotels & Car Rentals
Another way to earn points to fly free on Southwest is to book hotels and rental cars through the Southwest website. Sometimes there will be a large amount of points available for making a particular booking. Some hotel stays will give you 15,000 Rapid Reward points if you book through the Southwest website.
Shopping & Dining & Lifestyle
Southwest has a shopping portal that you can use to increase your collection of Rapid Reward points. You can earn points for stuff you were already going to buy anyway – and you don’t even need to have a Southwest credit card!
To find the best offers, go to this website. Scroll down past the “features offers” section to see the section titled All Online Offers. Sort this by “highest earn rate” and you will see the offers that will generate the most Rapid Rewards points. Peruse this every so often – there just might be something you want!
Southwest Dining is a program where you eat at participating restaurants, pay with a card you linked to the program, and get Rapid Rewards points in return. You do not have to have a Southwest card – you can use any credit card. You can search for participating restaurants on the website. Once you have signed up for the program and linked your credit cards, you don’t have to do anything except eat at the participating restaurants and pay with a linked card.
Southwest also partners with companies in a Home & Lifestyle program. You can get points by buying various services on this site like gas, insurance, and electricity for your home. Finally, you can sign up to take surveys to get points. I’ve done a few of these surveys, and they do take up a lot of time for very little points. But if you have a lot of spare time and like to take surveys, go for it!
Southwest Companion Pass
Obviously, you want to earn a lot of Rapid Rewards points so that you can fly on Southwest for free. But the main reason that you should quickly put together a pile of Rapid Rewards points is to earn a Southwest Companion Pass. A companion pass will allow you to name one person who can travel on your itinerary for free!
A companion pass is earned once you accrue 135,000 Southwest points in a calendar year. You can use most of the methods I described above – flying on Southwest, signing up for Southwest credit cards, using the shopping portal or dining program, booking hotels and cars on the Southwest website, etc. Unfortunately, signing up for a Chase Sapphire Preferred card and earning the bonus does not count towards the 135,000 points, even if you transfer the entire bonus to Southwest. The points have to be earned through Southwest in some way.
A companion pass lasts for the remainder of the year you earned it plus one additional calendar year. So if you time it correctly, you can earn the pass early in the year and have it for almost two full years!
Options for Earning a Companion Pass
The easiest way to earn a companion pass is to apply for both a Southwest personal credit card and a Southwest business credit card. Apply for both cards on December 1. Charge all of your daily expenses on these cards, but make sure you don’t reach the total spend requirement until January. These two cards will usually give you a combined total of 135,000 points to automatically earn a companion pass!
If you don’t want to or can’t apply for two credit cards, you will have to get creative. Apply for one credit card and try to earn the rest of the points as soon as possible through all the other avenues covered above. It will take you a little longer to earn the companion pass, but you will still reap the benefit for one calendar year after you earn it.
Hopefully I’ve sparked your interest in flying free on Southwest!
Tell us all about your travel hacking plans in the comments section below, and make sure to share if you learn new ways to earn points for free Southwest flights!
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