Many of you have likely heard of the Southwest companion pass, but if you haven’t, basically it is a reward benefit that lets you have BOGO (buy-one-get-one) Southwest tickets for your designated companion for the year you complete the requirements and the entire next year.
In the travel hacking community, it is usually viewed as the most coveted reward!
How to Earn This Reward?
To earn this reward, you need to earn 125,000 Southwest Points within 1 calendar year or take 100 qualifying flights on Southwest.
But most of us will not be flying 100 times within a calendar year so we will focus on the 125,000 points, which is how I earned my companion pass.
How it Works?
Once you meet the 125,000 point threshold, you immediately qualify for the Southwest Companion Pass. With this pass, you then are required to designate 1 “companion” who can be family or friend. This companion can be changed 3 times within the calendar year.
This companion is then able to travel with you for free. Essentially, the Companion Pass is a buy one ticket, get one ticket free deal. Or nearly free, as you will still pay taxes and fees.
This pass can be used anywhere that Southwest flies. Which is primarily in the greater 48 states but they have recently branched out to Hawaii and Internationally as well.
As of now, Southwest flies internationally to:
- Aruba (AUA)
- Belize City, Belize (BZE)
- Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos, Mexico (SJD)
- Cancun, Mexico (CUN)
- Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico (CZM)
- Grand Cayman (GCM)
- Havana, Cuba (HAV)
- Liberia, Costa Rica (LIR)
- Montego Bay, Jamaica (MBJ)
- Nassau, Bahamas (NAS)
- Providenciales, Turks and Caicos (PLS)
- Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (PVR)
- Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (PUJ)
- San José, Costa Rica (SJO)
- San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU)
When to Start Earning Points
The best way to maximize the benefits of the Companion Pass is to earn the 125,000 points at the beginning of the year because you will have the Companion Pass for the remaining year, PLUS the entire next year.
So ideally, you would begin earning points January 1st (points from the previous year don’t count) and reach the 125,000 within the first few months. For example, if you earned the Companion Pass in March 2021, your pass would last through December 2022. Giving you 21 months of BOGO travel!
I didn’t earn mine until 6 months into the year only giving me 18 months of BOGO travel. However, this was more due to the fact that I picked the worst year to attempt to earn my companion pass as it was and still is a pandemic. But I’ll explain this more shortly.
How to Reach 125,000 Points
According to Southwest, Points are earned from: “revenue flights booked through Southwest Airlines, your points earned by making purchases with a Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Credit Card, and your base points earned from Rapid Rewards partners.”
So basically, you can earn points from purchasing Southwest flights on any credit card, from any purchase on a Southwest Credit Card, and through purchases with Rapid Reward partners.
Rapid Reward partners could be credit card sign up bonuses, shopping/dining partners, and hotel partners.
Note: You can also earn 10,000 points for each Southwest Credit Card referral up to 50,000 points per year.
The Best Way to Earn the Companion Pass
The best way to earn a Companion Pass is through credit cards. However, if you are like me and the majority of the population, you aren’t an extremely high spender. So to reach 125,000 points on a 1 point to every $1 spent, you’d have to spend $125,000 in one calendar year which is unlikely.
So for the rest of us, we rely on credit card sign up bonuses/credit card hacking.
The way most people will need to earn this pass is through earning two Southwest credit card sign up bonuses. The most common route that people go is through some combination of the personal credit cards which currently are the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card.
I plan to do a full review of these cards but for now let’s just touch on the basics.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card
- Bonus: Currently 65,000 Points when you spend $2,000 in the first 3 months, normally this bonus is around 50,000 points
- Annual Fee: $69
- Credit Needed: Good – Excellent
- Earning Points: 1x points per $1 spent on purchases, 2x points per $1 spent on Southwest
- Annual Bonus: 3,000 points every card anniversary
- Expiration of Points: 24 months after last use: Will keep points even if you cancel the card.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card
- Bonus: Currently 65,000 Points when you spend $2,000 in the first 3 months, normally this bonus is around 50,000 points
- Annual Fee: $99
- Credit Needed: Good – Excellent
- Earning Points: 1x points per $1 spent on purchases, 2x points per $1 spent on Southwest
- Annual Bonus: 6,000 points every card anniversary
- Expiration of Points: 24 months after last use: Will keep points even if you cancel the card
Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card
- Bonus: Currently 65,000 Points when you spend $2,000 in the first 3 months, normally this bonus is around 50,000 points
- Annual Fee: $149
- Credit Needed: Good – Excellent
- Earning Points: 1x points per $1 spent on purchases, 2x points per $1 spent on Southwest
- Annual Bonus: 7,500 points every card anniversary
- Expiration of Points: 24 months after last use: Will keep points even if you cancel the card
- Bonus: 75$ Southwest annual travel credit, 4 upgraded boardings per year
You are also able to use Southwest Business credit cards to reach the 125,000 point bonus if you have a qualifying business. But remember, credit card companies aren’t the IRS so things that you may not think of as a business such as babysitting, online sales, dog walking, blogs are often considered a business.
This list includes the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business Credit Card and the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Credit Card.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business Credit Card
- Bonus: 60,000 Points when you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months
- Annual Fee: $99
- Credit Needed: Good – Excellent
- Earning Points: 1x points per $1 spent on purchases, 2x points per $1 spent on Southwest
- Annual Bonus: 6,000 points every card anniversary
- Expiration of Points: 24 months after last use: Will keep points even if you cancel the card
Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Credit Card
- Bonus: 70,000 Points when you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months, plus an additional 30,000 points if you spend $25,000 in 6 months
- Annual Fee: $199
- Credit Needed: Good – Excellent
- Earning Points: 1x points per $1 spent on purchases, 2x points on select business purchases, 3x points per $1 spent on Southwest
- Annual Bonus: 9,000 points every card anniversary
- Expiration of Points: 24 months after last use: Will keep points even if you cancel the card.
- Bonus: 4 upgraded boardings annually, 365 in flight wifi credits, free Global Entry or TSA Precheck every 4 years
So with two large signup bonuses it’s easy to see how this can add up to the required 125,000 points. However, let’s do an example to show it.
Example
So currently the reward bonus for the Rapid Rewards Plus and Premier credit cards are 65,000 points so reaching these bonuses would require $4,000 of spending over a period of 6 months. Which for most Americans, spending $1,000 per month on your regular monthly purchases, especially as a household is not very difficult.
So let’s say we accomplish this in 4 months. That means we open the first card in January, reach the bonus by March, open the next card immediately, and reach the bonus by the end of April. This costs us $170 dollars in annual fees. We earn 139,000 points (135,000 from the bonuses and 4,000 from spending) AND the coveted Companion Pass.
Now let’s say each bonus is only worth 50,000 for the personal cards. So getting two bonuses will only result in 104,000 points. So that means we have a few options since we are 21,000 points short:
We could either pair one of the personal credit cards with a business credit card which would get us over the 125,000 points (50,000 + 70,000 + 5,000 from the spending).
Or if we don’t have a business we could pair our two 50,000 bonuses bringing us to 104,000. Then we could either continue using this credit card for the next few months to increase spending and therefore points. But I prefer more of a targeted spending approach.
Targeted Spending
All I mean by targeted spending is using the Southwest Rapid Rewards Dining or Hotels features to decide where to eat out or stay. Because when you do this, you’ll receive bonus points that go a long way towards getting your companion pass. I was 12,000 points short this year (which I will explain later), so I used the hotel bonuses to earn over 3,000 extra points per night stay.
I was easily able to gain my Companion Pass after just two short weekend trips where I was already going to be staying in a hotel anyways. It’s just being smart about how you spend if you are missing a few points. I never once spent more than what I was planning on just to earn my Companion Pass. (bolded to really drive this point home).
What Points Don’t Count Towards the Companion Pass
- Transferring Points from Flexible Credit Cards or Other Airline Cards: For example, if you earned the Capital One Venture points or Chase Ultimate Rewards points (which we love), you could transfer those points to Southwest but these points wouldn’t get you any closer to the Companion Pass.
- Buying Points: Oftentimes airlines will offer discounted prices to buy points for future travel which can be a great deal. Unfortunately, these points also don’t count towards your Companion Pass.
Why This Reward is So Valuable: Please Read This!!
Remember, that to earn this pass you are required to earn at least 125,000 Southwest points. Well, these points don’t just go away once you earn the pass. They can still be used for free travel and can be paired with the Companion Pass.
Most point experts value these points at around 1.5 cents, meaning that these points are valued at roughly $1,875 dollars of free travel. So when paired with the Companion Pass it essentially is $3,750 of free travel as you can buy a ticket using points, then get a free ticket from your pass.
And then once you use this free travel up, you STILL GET BOGO Southwest tickets further increasing the savings.
There is not a better travel reward in the game!
I plan to keep track of how valuable this pass was for me over the next 1.5 years and I’ll report back.
How I Earned My Pass
Just to explain why I didn’t earn my pass until over half way through the year I wanted to explain how I earned my pass and why I didn’t follow my own rules.
At the start of the year I signed up for the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card, at that time the bonus deal was earn 40,000 points after you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months and an additional 35,000 points if you spend $5,000 in the first 6 months.
So after reaching this accomplishment through my normal spending and the addition of some big purchases that my girlfriend needed to make for dental school, I reached both bonuses by April. This left me at 81,000 points.
I was fully planning to open either the Premiere or Priority card next to reach the 125,000 points, however, this was right around when airlines began to shut down, travel halted, and saving money became a little more important as COVID ramped up. So I waited a little bit before deciding my next step since I knew I wouldn’t be traveling any time soon. So getting my Companion Pass early in the year wasn’t the biggest priority.
Which sadly wasted some of the value of the pass but still 1.5 years of BOGO travel for just my normal spending isn’t too shabby.
However, I still hadn’t reached my 125,000 points. Well, right around this time, Southwest must have realized people stopped pursuing the Companion Pass and weren’t traveling as much, so they gave everyone 25,000 points to bring my total up to 106,000 points.
They also rolled out several deals for 6x points on groceries, 4x points on gas and dining, and higher bonuses for hotel stays. So through some targeted spending over the next 2+ months, I was able to reach the coveted 125,000 points.
Because I only needed to open 1 credit card it only cost me $69 to acquire the pass. Which also meant I only had 1 credit card counting towards Chase’s 5/24 rule. Making it easier for me to earn this pass again in the future.
FAQ
Question: Does opening two credit cards within 6 months hurt my credit score?
Answer: No. Your credit will initially dip 5-10 points when you first open your card but by paying your card off on time it will return to it’s normal shortly after.
Question: When do I cancel these credit cards?
Answer: I cancel the cards a few weeks before the next annual fee to avoid paying for the card again. Because the points don’t disappear when you cancel your card, there are few benefits to keeping the card open past this date.
Question: Does my credit drop when I cancel my credit cards?
Answer: Just like opening credit cards, your credit will initially dip 5-10 points before returning to normal if you continue healthy debt/financial practices. (post coming)
Let me know if you have any other questions about the Southwest Companion Pass and I can update the FAQ’s.
Conclusion
It’s the best travel hack on the market today. If you fly domestically often, this pass will save you legitimately thousands of dollars over the course of two years. I wish I would have earned this pass years ago.
Pro Tip: The Companion Pass is great for people in relationships as you can rotate back and forth with who earns the pass. Two years under spouse 1, the next two years under spouse 2. Rinse and repeat. Companion Pass 4 Life!
To get started on your own companion pass, feel free to use my referral code below!
Let me know what you think!
