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 examine two baggage without spending a dime, and Speedy Rewards factors are a number of the most simply redeemable in comparison with different loyalty packages. Due to this fact, it is no shock that some TPG staffers regard Southwest as one of many high airways.

Maintain studying to be taught a number of the greatest methods you possibly can earn and redeem Southwest Speedy Rewards factors.

Southwest Speedy Rewards program overview

Like Southwest Airways itself, the Speedy Rewards frequent flyer program has amassed a loyal following. Regardless of not having a normal 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 Cross makes Speedy Rewards a superb alternative for {couples}, households and people with not-so-flexible schedules.

Like JetBlue’s TrueBlue program, all Southwest award tickets are priced based mostly on the ticket’s money worth. This implies the dearer the ticket you wish to e book, the extra factors you may want. TPG presently values Speedy Rewards factors at 1.4 cents per level, that 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 supplies factors; extends elite standing and Companion Cross for choose vacationers

Southwest elite standing

Along with the Companion Cross, Southwest gives two elite standing tiers: A-Listing and A-Listing Most well-liked.

Southwest A-Listing elite standing

To qualify for A-Listing standing, it’s essential to fly 20 one-way Southwest flights or earn 35,000 tier-qualifying factors in a calendar 12 months.

Tier-qualifying factors embody these earned from paid flights booked by Southwest or by assembly spending thresholds on the Southwest Speedy Rewards Precedence Credit score Card, the Southwest Speedy Rewards Premier Credit score Card, the Southwest Speedy Rewards Premier Enterprise Credit score Card or the Southwest Speedy Rewards Efficiency Enterprise Credit score Card. Bought factors and factors earned from Speedy Rewards program enrollment, bank card bonuses, tier bonus factors, flight bonus factors and accomplice factors don’t rely towards A-Listing or A-Listing Most well-liked standing.

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With Southwest A-Listing standing, you may get the next:

• Precedence boarding
• 25% bonus on factors earned from paid flights
• Free same-day standby/modifications (taxes and costs could apply)
• Precedence check-in and safety lane entry
• Devoted A-Listing member cellphone line

Southwest A-Listing Most well-liked elite standing

A-Listing 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-Listing standing, however this tier comes with extra 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 price?

Learn how to earn Southwest Speedy Rewards factors

There are a couple of methods to earn Southwest Speedy Rewards factors — lots of which do not require flying.

Earn Speedy Rewards factors by flying

As you may anticipate, you possibly can earn Speedy Rewards factors each time you fly on a paid Southwest Airways flight. The variety of factors you may earn on each journey is dependent upon the price of your flight, your A-Listing elite standing, the kind of ticket you bought and your fee technique.

Southwest has 4 ticket courses. Every contains totally different advantages, with the very best fare — Enterprise Choose — together with precedence boarding and a free alcoholic drink on board. Here 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 costs. Once you buy a Southwest ticket, you possibly can view your flight’s base fare on the airline’s web site.

So, for those who bought a Wanna Get Away fare with a $100 base worth, you’d earn 600 Southwest Speedy Rewards factors after you are taking your flight. Then again, 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-Listing and A-Listing Most well-liked elite standing earn much more miles on paid flights. Every standing tier earns the next bonus on paid flights:

• A-Listing: 25% bonus
• A-Listing Most well-liked: 100% bonus

Utilizing the above $100 base fare instance, an A-Listing member would earn 750 Speedy Rewards factors on a Wanna Get Away fare, whereas an A-Listing Most well-liked member would earn 1,200 Speedy Rewards factors. The mileage bonus is arguably probably the most precious perk of Southwest elite standing and will 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. Presently, the airline gives three private and two enterprise bank cards, every with various advantages, welcome bonuses and annual charges.

Right now, you possibly can earn Southwest’s profitable Companion Cross, legitimate by 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 gives the next enterprise playing cards:

Along with a beautiful welcome bonus, every card has distinctive advantages. For instance, the Southwest Precedence card contains an annual $75 journey credit score and seven,500 bonus factors (price $105 per TPG’s valuations). This fully offsets the cardboard’s $149 annual price and can assist you to earn extra factors all year long.

Moreover, you possibly can switch factors from Chase Final Rewards to Southwest Speedy Rewards at a 1:1 switch ratio. In the event you do not thoughts lacking out on the Southwest-specific perks, it’s possible you’ll take into account 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 whilst you eat with Speedy Rewards Eating

Like many airways, Southwest gives a eating rewards program the place you possibly can earn factors. Create a Speedy Rewards Eating account, and hyperlink your bank cards to earn Speedy 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 sure to enroll in e-mail notifications once you enroll in Speedy Rewards Eating. By doing so, you may earn 3 factors per greenback spent at collaborating eating places. Sadly, opting out of e-mail notifications will drastically lower your earnings to 1 level per $2 spent.

The Speedy Rewards Eating program gives a beautiful set of welcome bonuses. You may earn 500 bonus factors after you spend $25 and assessment a collaborating restaurant within the first 30 days, and you may earn extra factors by leaving evaluations and performing different duties. You may search by all collaborating eating places on the Speedy Rewards Eating web site.

Make purchases by Speedy Rewards Buying

You may earn bonus factors once you store on-line with Speedy Rewards Buying. Like Speedy Rewards Eating, the miles you may earn with this procuring portal are along with the factors you earn with a bank card.

Utilizing Speedy Rewards Buying is straightforward: Join an account, discover your service provider on Speedy Rewards and click on by its hyperlink earlier than making a purchase order. Factors are normally credited to your Speedy Rewards account inside every week of constructing a purchase order, however some retailers could take longer to course of.

The variety of factors you may earn per greenback spent varies by service provider and modifications often. The portal usually has promotions that provide bonus factors once you spend a set amount of cash. Control the Speedy Rewards Buying web site to see when these promos are taking place.

One very last thing: At all times examine a procuring portal aggregator like Cashback Monitor earlier than you store by Speedy Rewards Buying. The service provider you are ordering from could supply extra factors elsewhere.

E-book motels

Southwest has partnerships with a number of the main resort corporations. That permits you to earn Southwest Speedy Rewards factors as an alternative of resort factors, however we do not usually advocate this selection.

You may earn as much as 10,000 factors per evening by reserving resort rooms with Southwest Accommodations or Rocketmiles. Evaluate charges with each, and e book with whichever platform, if both, most closely fits your wants.

The variety of factors you may earn usually correlates to the value of your resort room, and you may earn extra factors once you e book Factors Plus properties. Keep in mind that you can not earn resort factors or use resort elite standing advantages on these bookings, and you may usually have to e book instantly with the resort to make use of these advantages.

You may e book many boutique motels by Southwest Accommodations, so it might be price reserving these by Southwest Accommodations 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 charge by Southwest Accommodations or Rocketmiles.

Associated: 10 straightforward methods to earn extra Southwest Speedy Rewards factors

The method for redeeming Speedy 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 out there flight. You may filter flights by the variety of layovers and departure occasions utilizing the buttons on the high of the web page. Then, click on on the ticket worth once you discover a flight you’d prefer to e book 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 individual for those who 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 extra price. These tickets embody group A1 to A15 boarding, expedited safety at choose airports and a free alcoholic drink on board. Often, they price greater than triple the factors price of a Wanna Get Away fare, so we advocate staying away from them normally.

Can I modify Southwest award tickets without spending a dime?

Like all Southwest fares, you possibly can change or cancel Southwest award tickets without spending a dime. In the event you decide to vary a ticket, you are solely chargeable for paying the brand new ticket’s fare distinction if it is dearer. Then again, for those who swap to a less expensive flight, Southwest will refund the distinction in factors. With this in thoughts, we extremely advocate maintaining a tally of award pricing after you e book a flight — if the fare goes down, you possibly can request a refund for the extra miles.

Canceling a Southwest award ticket is simply as easy. Once you cancel your ticket, the miles you used to e book will probably be refunded to your Speedy Rewards account. There are not any extra cancellation charges.

Do I’ve to pay taxes and costs on award tickets?

You’re chargeable for paying sure kinds of taxes and costs once you e book Southwest award tickets.

Can I redeem for accomplice award tickets?

As talked about above, Southwest is without doubt one of the few airways with out worldwide airline companions.

Associated: 10 nations you did not know you possibly can fly to on Southwest

Maximize your miles with the Southwest Companion Cross

The Southwest Companion Cross is undoubtedly one of the precious perks. After incomes the move, you possibly can select a companion to journey with you for simply the price of taxes and costs on Southwest flights booked with money or miles. You need to use the Companion Cross on as many flights as you would like, successfully doubling the worth of your Speedy Rewards factors.

You may earn a Companion Cross by flying 100 Southwest one-way flight segments or — extra virtually for many — incomes 135,000 qualifying factors. Qualifying factors embody Speedy Rewards factors earned by flying, spending on bank cards and making purchases through Speedy Rewards Eating and/or Speedy Rewards Buying.

Welcome bonuses on Southwest cobranded bank cards rely towards the Companion Cross, so you may make some critical progress by opening one of many Southwest bank cards featured earlier. Moreover, all Southwest bank card holders get 10,000 Companion Cross qualifying factors deposited into their account yearly.

Bear in mind, you possibly can earn a Companion Cross legitimate by 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 Cross.

Your Companion Cross will probably be legitimate for the rest of the 12 months it is earned and everything of the next 12 months. In the event you plan on incomes your Companion Cross by bank card welcome bonuses, attempt to time your spending to earn the required mileage in the beginning of the 12 months. This provides you with probably the most time to take pleasure in your hard-earned Companion Cross since will probably be legitimate for nearly two years.

You may solely set one companion at a time, however you possibly can 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 Speedy Rewards factors on their flight, however you may nonetheless earn factors for those who fly on a paid ticket.

Associated: 15 classes from 15 years of getting the Southwest Companion Cross

Then again, Southwest has had its justifiable share 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 fashionable with every kind of vacationers, particularly households.

Now you know the way to make an knowledgeable choice about Southwest’s Speedy Rewards program so you possibly can resolve if it is best for you to have interaction with.