Easy Southwest Companion Pass For CA Residents
**Update: This offer is no longer available**
Chase & Southwest are offering California residents the chance to earn the Companion Pass after making a purchase on a new Southwest Rapid Rewards credit card!
The Southwest Companion pass is easily one of the most valuable travel perks around! If you’re unaware, the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass allows the user to select a companion to fly with them for free on all Southwest flights. That’s right, for free! There are no blackout dates, no routes excluded, and no hoops to jump through. Any flight you book, your companion gets to fly too, completely free. The pass is the most ideal for couples as you’re essentially getting all of your flights with Southwest for 50% off!
All you have to do is follow these three steps: Submit a Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Card application with a valid California address, before the deadline of November 30th, then make a single purchase on the card. This will automatically award you the Southwest Companion Pass for all of 2018. You will still have to pay the annual card fee for the Plus ($69) or Premier ($99) card, but, this is still an incredible deal as you’d ordinarily need to earn 110,000 points!
If you’re strategic about it, you can even extend your companion pass through all of 2019 without much trouble. Here’s how…
Like I mentioned, traditionally, you need to earn 110,000 points between January and December of any given year in order to earn the Companion Pass for the rest of that year as well as the next year. Meaning, while your Southwest Rapid Reward points from year to year don’t ‘expire’, they do not rollover towards earning the companion pass.
So, California residents, if you sign-up for this card and WAIT to make your first purchase on January 1st, 2018…the 40,000 point sign-up bonus that comes with the card will post to your account in 2018 instead of 2017. This way, you’d need only to earn 70,000 more Southwest Rapid Rewards points in 2018 to extend your companion pass for all of 2019 as well!
So how are you going to earn 70,000 more Rapid Reward points? I’m so glad you asked! You see Southwest regularly runs increased sign-up bonuses on their credit cards to around 50k-60k points…in fact, their last increased offer just ended at the beginning of October. When the next increased offer comes around in 2018, you’ll want to sign-up for whichever personal card you didn’t apply for to earn the companion pass in the first place…making it so you’ll only need to earn 10k-20k points in 2018. This can easily be achieved by both the Southwest shopping and dining portals, spending on your cards, and of course, all the times you’ll be flying Southwest with your NEW COMPANION PASS!
But what if you live in the other 49 states? Well, unfortunately, you won’t be able to take advantage of this offer. But the strategy I suggested for Californians still applies for you all. Essentially you’ll just need to bide your time and wait for Southwest to offer increased sign-up offers again, that’s what I did! Most likely in early of 2018, the will bring back the 60,000 point sign-up offer on both the Plus and Premier card. Meaning all you will need to do to earn the companion pass for all of 2018 and 2019 is apply for and meet the minimum spends on both cards! Awesome right?!
If you aren’t familiar with Southwest Airlines, they are easily the largest and one of the most popular budget carriers, if not the preferred airline of most travelers. Southwest charges no change or cancellation fees, seats are first come-first serve, and every person gets to bring TWO checked bags for free! Not to mention their route map is huge! Flying almost everywhere in the continental US, Mexico, and the Carribean. They are even planning to add flights to Hawaii in late 2018/early 2019! For my Cincinnati based flyers, Southwest currently only flies direct to Chicago and Baltimore–but the good news is both of those destinations are large hubs for Southwest so they can easily connect you to just about any other destination you’d want to visit!
If you know any residents of California who you think would benefit from the Southwest Companion Pass, please pass along the travel love and share this post with them! If you don’t currently live in California, are you planning to earn the Companion Post in 2018 when the increased offers come back? If you have any questions about anything in the post, just leave a comment and I’d be happy to answer!
If you missed Monday’s post on how I booked two first-class flights to Paris for $11, you should check it out as its been one of my most popular posts ever!
Cheers and safe travels!
**Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the authors alone. All methods explained are only intended to be used by those who have the capacity to pay off their bills in full every month! If you cannot pay your bills off in time or are currently carrying credit card debt, do not pursue these methods! Please consider your personal circumstances before attempting to replicate any techniques described. **
