Southwest Airways prides itself on its “transfarency” philosophy — low fares and no change charges, hidden charges or sudden bag charges. No matter your fare kind, every passenger can verify two baggage without cost, and Fast Rewards factors are a few of the most simply redeemable in comparison with different loyalty applications. Due to this fact, it is no shock that some TPG staffers regard Southwest as one of many prime airways.
Hold studying to study a few of the greatest methods you’ll be able to earn and redeem Southwest Fast Rewards factors.
Southwest Fast Rewards program overview
Like Southwest Airways itself, the Fast Rewards frequent flyer program has amassed a loyal following. Regardless of not having a typical award chart or being a part of an airline alliance, its promise of no blackout dates and the flexibility to earn Southwest’s well-known Companion Move makes Fast Rewards a wonderful alternative for {couples}, households and people with not-so-flexible schedules.
Like JetBlue’s TrueBlue program, all Southwest award tickets are priced primarily based on the ticket’s money worth. This implies the dearer the ticket you wish to guide, the extra factors you will want. TPG at present values Fast Rewards factors at 1.4 cents per level, which means 10,000 factors ought to offer you round $140 in worth.
Nevertheless, relying in your ticket’s worth, it’s possible you’ll get roughly.
Associated: Southwest offers factors; extends elite standing and Companion Move for choose vacationers
Southwest elite standing
Along with the Companion Move, Southwest provides two elite standing tiers: A-Record and A-Record Most well-liked.
Southwest A-Record elite standing
To qualify for A-Record standing, you could fly 20 one-way Southwest flights or earn 35,000 tier-qualifying factors in a calendar 12 months.
Tier-qualifying factors embrace these earned from paid flights booked by means of Southwest or by assembly spending thresholds on the Southwest Fast Rewards Precedence Credit score Card, the Southwest Fast Rewards Premier Credit score Card, the Southwest Fast Rewards Premier Enterprise Credit score Card or the Southwest Fast Rewards Efficiency Enterprise Credit score Card. Bought factors and factors earned from Fast Rewards program enrollment, bank card bonuses, tier bonus factors, flight bonus factors and associate factors don’t rely towards A-Record or A-Record Most well-liked standing.
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With Southwest A-Record standing, you will get the next:
- Precedence boarding
- 25% bonus on factors earned from paid flights
- Free same-day standby/modifications (taxes and charges could apply)
- Precedence check-in and safety lane entry
- Devoted A-Record member cellphone line
Southwest A-Record Most well-liked elite standing
A-Record Most well-liked standing requires you to fly 40 qualifying one-way Southwest flights or earn 70,000 tier-qualifying factors in a calendar 12 months. You may obtain all the advantages of A-Record standing, however this tier comes with further perks:
- 100% bonus on factors earned from paid flights
- Free inflight Wi-Fi
- Two free premium drinks on flights of 176 miles or extra
Associated: What’s Southwest elite standing value?
earn Southwest Fast Rewards factors
There are a number of methods to earn Southwest Fast Rewards factors — lots of which do not require flying.
Earn Fast Rewards factors by flying
As you may count on, you’ll be able to earn Fast Rewards factors each time you fly on a paid Southwest Airways flight. The variety of factors you will earn on each journey is determined by the price of your flight, your A-Record elite standing, the kind of ticket you bought and your cost methodology.
Southwest has 4 ticket lessons. Every consists of totally different advantages, with the very best fare — Enterprise Choose — together with precedence boarding and a free alcoholic drink on board. This is what number of factors every fare class earns:
- Wanna Get Away: 6 factors per greenback
- Wanna Get Away Plus: 8 factors per greenback
- Anytime: 10 factors per greenback
- Enterprise Choose: 12 factors per greenback
You may earn factors in your ticket’s base fare. The bottom fare is the ticket’s price, excluding any related taxes and charges. While you buy a Southwest ticket, you’ll be able to view your flight’s base fare on the airline’s web site.
So, when you bought a Wanna Get Away fare with a $100 base value, you’d earn 600 Southwest Fast Rewards factors after you’re taking your flight. Alternatively, a Wanna Get Away Plus ticket would earn 800 factors, an Anytime ticket would earn 1,000 factors and a Enterprise Choose ticket would earn 1,200 factors.
As talked about, Southwest A-Record and A-Record Most well-liked elite standing earn much more miles on paid flights. Every standing tier earns the next bonus on paid flights:
- A-Record: 25% bonus
- A-Record Most well-liked: 100% bonus
Utilizing the above $100 base fare instance, an A-Record member would earn 750 Fast Rewards factors on a Wanna Get Away fare, whereas an A-Record Most well-liked member would earn 1,200 Fast Rewards factors. The mileage bonus is arguably essentially the most useful perk of Southwest elite standing and may help you rack up tons of additional miles all through your travels.
Earn with Southwest bank cards
Southwest Airways has a number of cobranded bank cards issued by Chase. At the moment, the airline provides three private and two enterprise bank cards, every with various advantages, welcome bonuses and annual charges.
At the moment, you’ll be able to earn Southwest’s profitable Companion Move, legitimate by means of Feb. 28, 2025, plus 30,000 bonus factors after you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening on the next private playing cards:
Southwest additionally provides the next enterprise playing cards:
Along with a horny welcome bonus, every card has distinctive advantages. For instance, the Southwest Precedence card consists of an annual $75 journey credit score and seven,500 bonus factors (value $105 per TPG’s valuations). This fully offsets the cardboard’s $149 annual charge and can make it easier to earn extra factors all year long.
Moreover, you’ll be able to switch factors from Chase Final Rewards to Southwest Fast Rewards at a 1:1 switch ratio. When you do not thoughts lacking out on the Southwest-specific perks, it’s possible you’ll think about making use of for the Chase Sapphire Most well-liked Card because it earns 2 factors per greenback spent on journey and three factors per greenback spent on eating purchases.
Earn factors when you eat with Fast Rewards Eating
Like many airways, Southwest provides a eating rewards program the place you’ll be able to earn factors. Create a Fast Rewards Eating account, and hyperlink your bank cards to earn Fast Rewards factors each time you dine at a collaborating restaurant. That is along with the rewards you’d earn with a bank card, so hyperlink a card that earns bonus factors on eating to maximise your points-earning.
Be certain to join e-mail notifications if you enroll in Fast Rewards Eating. By doing so, you will earn 3 factors per greenback spent at collaborating eating places. Sadly, opting out of e-mail notifications will drastically minimize your earnings to 1 level per $2 spent.
The Fast Rewards Eating program provides a horny set of welcome bonuses. You may earn 500 bonus factors after you spend $25 and evaluate a collaborating restaurant within the first 30 days, and you may earn further factors by leaving opinions and performing different duties. You may search by means of all collaborating eating places on the Fast Rewards Eating web site.
Make purchases by means of Fast Rewards Procuring
You may earn bonus factors if you store on-line with Fast Rewards Procuring. Like Fast Rewards Eating, the miles you will earn with this procuring portal are along with the factors you earn with a bank card.
Utilizing Fast Rewards Procuring is straightforward: Join an account, discover your service provider on Fast Rewards and click on by means of its hyperlink earlier than making a purchase order. Factors are often credited to your Fast Rewards account inside every week of creating a purchase order, however some retailers could take longer to course of.
The variety of factors you will earn per greenback spent varies by service provider and modifications steadily. The portal typically has promotions that provide bonus factors if you spend a set sum of money. Keep watch over the Fast Rewards Procuring web site to see when these promos are taking place.
One very last thing: At all times verify a procuring portal aggregator like Cashback Monitor earlier than you store by means of Fast Rewards Procuring. The service provider you are ordering from could supply extra factors elsewhere.
E-book resorts
Southwest has partnerships with a few of the main resort firms. That permits you to earn Southwest Fast Rewards factors as an alternative of resort factors, however we do not usually advocate this feature.
You may earn as much as 10,000 factors per night time by reserving resort rooms with Southwest Motels or Rocketmiles. Evaluate charges with each, and guide with whichever platform, if both, most accurately fits your wants.
The variety of factors you will earn typically correlates to the worth of your resort room, and you may earn extra factors if you guide Factors Plus properties. Keep in mind that you can’t earn resort factors or use resort elite standing advantages on these bookings, and you may usually must guide immediately with the resort to make use of these advantages.
You may guide many boutique resorts by means of Southwest Motels, so it might be value reserving these by means of Southwest Motels in the event that they in any other case would not earn factors. Evaluate pricing with the resort’s web site to make sure you get a comparable price by means of Southwest Motels or Rocketmiles.
Associated: 10 straightforward methods to earn extra Southwest Fast Rewards factors
redeem Southwest Fast Rewards
Now that you’ve got earned Fast Rewards factors, let’s focus on learn how to redeem them.
There are a number of methods to redeem your factors, however you will virtually at all times get essentially the most worth out of your Fast Rewards factors when you redeem them for journey on Southwest flights. Different redemption choices like present playing cards and merchandise will yield a lot much less worth.
The method for redeeming Fast Rewards factors for flights is basically the identical as reserving a paid flight. Head to the Southwest homepage, enter your search standards and choose the “Factors” choice. Click on the yellow search button to see your flight choices.
You may see award pricing to the appropriate of every obtainable flight. You may filter flights by the variety of layovers and departure occasions utilizing the buttons on the prime of the web page. Then, click on on the ticket value if you discover a flight you’d prefer to guide and observe the on-screen prompts.
What fare kind ought to I select?
You may redeem factors for flights in any of the 4 Southwest fare sorts. Wanna Get Away — the least costly fare kind — is greatest for many vacationers.
Wanna Get Away Plus is barely extra versatile, with free confirmed and stand-by same-day flight modifications. Moreover, these fares allow you to switch flight credit score to a different particular person when you cancel your flight.
Anytime fares have the identical advantages as Wanna Get Away Plus, in addition to precedence safety and EarlyBird check-in. Anytime money fares are refundable, however keep in mind that Wanna Get Away fares are additionally refundable when reserving with factors.
Lastly, the advantages of Enterprise Choose fares are hardly definitely worth the further price. These tickets embrace group A1 to A15 boarding, expedited safety at choose airports and a free alcoholic drink on board. Normally, they price greater than triple the factors price of a Wanna Get Away fare, so we advocate staying away from them usually.
Can I modify Southwest award tickets without cost?
Like all Southwest fares, you’ll be able to change or cancel Southwest award tickets without cost. When you decide to vary a ticket, you are solely chargeable for paying the brand new ticket’s fare distinction if it is dearer. Alternatively, when you swap to a less expensive flight, Southwest will refund the distinction in factors. With this in thoughts, we extremely advocate keeping track of award pricing after you guide a flight — if the fare goes down, you’ll be able to request a refund for the extra miles.
Canceling a Southwest award ticket is simply as easy. While you cancel your ticket, the miles you used to guide will probably be refunded to your Fast Rewards account. There aren’t any further cancellation charges.
Do I’ve to pay taxes and charges on award tickets?
You might be chargeable for paying sure sorts of taxes and charges if you guide Southwest award tickets.
Can I redeem for associate award tickets?
As talked about above, Southwest is among the few airways with out worldwide airline companions.
Associated: 10 international locations you did not know you may fly to on Southwest
Maximize your miles with the Southwest Companion Move
The Southwest Companion Move is undoubtedly probably the most useful perks. After incomes the go, you’ll be able to select a companion to journey with you for simply the price of taxes and charges on Southwest flights booked with money or miles. You should utilize the Companion Move on as many flights as you want, successfully doubling the worth of your Fast Rewards factors.
You may earn a Companion Move by flying 100 Southwest one-way flight segments or — extra virtually for many — incomes 135,000 qualifying factors. Qualifying factors embrace Fast Rewards factors earned by flying, spending on bank cards and making purchases through Fast Rewards Eating and/or Fast Rewards Procuring.
Welcome bonuses on Southwest cobranded bank cards rely towards the Companion Move, so you can also make some severe progress by opening one of many Southwest bank cards featured earlier. Moreover, all Southwest bank card holders get 10,000 Companion Move qualifying factors deposited into their account yearly.
Keep in mind, you’ll be able to earn a Companion Move legitimate by means of Feb. 28, 2025, plus an additional 30,000 bonus factors after you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening on the next playing cards:
Sadly, transfers from Chase Final Rewards don’t rely towards the Companion Move.
Your Companion Move will probably be legitimate for the rest of the 12 months it is earned and the whole lot of the next 12 months. When you plan on incomes your Companion Move by means of bank card welcome bonuses, attempt to time your spending to earn the required mileage initially of the 12 months. This offers you essentially the most time to take pleasure in your hard-earned Companion Move since it is going to be legitimate for nearly two years.
You may solely set one companion at a time, however you’ll be able to change your companion 3 times per 12 months. You may change your companion by calling Southwest at 800-435-9792. Keep in mind that your companion won’t earn Fast Rewards factors on their flight, however you will nonetheless earn factors when you fly on a paid ticket.
Associated: 15 classes from 15 years of getting the Southwest Companion Move
Backside line
Southwest Fast Rewards factors are extraordinarily straightforward to earn and redeem, and the extremely useful Companion Move units Southwest aside. Do not miss your quick monitor to a Companion Move with the appropriate cobranded bank card.
Alternatively, Southwest has had its fair proportion of operational points. To not point out, its top-tier elite members and full-fare Enterprise Choose prospects aren’t assured a bulkhead or exit row seat, which might make Southwest’s transcontinental and Hawaii flights uncomfortable for taller vacationers.
Nonetheless, this system stays well-liked with all types of vacationers, particularly households.
Now you understand how to make an knowledgeable choice about Southwest’s Fast Rewards program so you’ll be able to resolve if it is best for you to interact with.
