I know how hard it is to save money on your vacation. With that in mind, Southwest Airlines has a deal for travelers who want to bring someone with them on every flight they take for the rest of the year and all of next year for just the cost of taxes — it’s a sweet benefit called Companion Pass, and if you earn it, you can designate someone as your companion whenever you fly on Southwest, who can come along with you for no additional airfare. You just pay for the taxes and fees, which are small; usually less than $30 round trip.
The best part is you don’t have to fly Southwest much or at all to earn it. You need to earn 110,000 qualifying points during one calendar year (January through December). And you can earn these points in any of three ways: 1) flying a lot of Southwest flights, 2) earning points from the Southwest Rapid Rewards credit card, or 3) earning points from many of Southwest’s partners like hotels and rental cars.
Think earning 110,000 points is hard? It isn’t as hard as you think. Southwest often offers 50,000 points just for signing up for its Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards. It’s doing it right now, and there are four cards to choose from. So you can get the bonus on two of them and earn over 100,000 points. You just have to spend about $1,000 on each card within three months of opening and pay an annual fee of $69 – $99 each.
Another way to earn points for Companion Pass is to transfer points from your favorite hotel points programs like Marriott and Hyatt into Southwest. It’s easy to rack up a lot of those points with credit card sign ups. For example, you could get 70,000 points signing up for a Marriott credit card and turn those into 25,000 Rapid Rewards points just by logging online to your Marriott account and transferring them over.
Once you earn Companion Pass it’s valid for the remainder of the year and all of the following year. So you could have almost two years worth of companion flights if you do it quickly this year.
And the points you earn for Southwest Companion Pass can go toward booking award flights. For example, 50,000 points is worth over $700 in flights — so if you earn Companion Pass with 110,000 points you’ll have over $1,500 in flight credit to use on Southwest, and you can bring a companion along on all of those flights. With a typical ticket costing about $300 you can get five or more trips with a companion without ever paying for airfare for either of you. That’s all well worth it for thousands of dollars in award flights.
There are no gimmicks. Every seat on Southwest is available for use with your points. And you can change your plans at any time with no cancellation fees. Even better, Southwest doesn’t charge bag fees either. The only catch is you must be traveling on the same flight as your companion when you use the pass and you can only change your designated companion’s name three times. Otherwise, it’s a great way to see the country and get in touch with friends and family you haven’t seen in a while!
Photo Credit: Yazan Badran