The Incredible Airline Perk You Need To Get Right Now From Southwest

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If you fly Southwest Airlines and don't have the Companion Pass, you could be losing thousands of dollars a year.

In On Points, Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, shares his strategies for getting the most out of your points and miles.

Southwest Airlines is…different. It’s the only U.S. airline that still gives passengers two free checked bags on all fares, and doesn’t charge fees for flight changes or cancellations. But the biggest difference may be its loyalty program, Rapid Rewards. It’s typical in a lot of ways—as with JetBlue and Virgin America, you can redeem points for any flight. Like United and Delta, Southwest gives you points depending on how much you spend.

But Southwest also offers one of the most powerful perks in existence, if you know how to get it and use it: the Companion Pass.

Why the Companion Pass is Special

This isn’t your typical companion pass, which can be redeemed once for a “free” ticket (usually with additional fees and scant seat availability). It is much, much more valuable. Southwest’s Companion Pass is a semi-elite status. When you fly 100 flights OR accrue 110,000 Companion Pass Qualifying Points (more on that in a minute) in a calendar year, you achieve Companion Pass Status. You don’t have to trade in the miles for status—you get it in addition to those points.

That means you can take a designated companion with you whenever you buy or use points for a Southwest ticket, paying only nominal government fees. And get this—the status is good for the whole year that you qualify and the following year. So the earlier you get your Companion Pass in a calendar year, the more time you have to maximize it. For example, if you qualify on February 15, 2016, it will be valid until December 31, 2017.

You Can Get It Without Even Flying

Amazingly, you don’t need to set foot on a plane to earn those 110,000 Companion Pass Qualifying Points: you can do it by signing up for a Southwest credit card from Chase.

The sign-up bonus (which is currently 50,000 points) counts towards pass status. And if you have a small business, you can also get the business version of the card; after you spend $2,000 on each card to get your bonus, you end up at 104,000 points. You need to charge $6,000 more to get the Companion Pass, since every dollar spent on the credit card earns 1 qualifying point.

Earn Southwest Qualifying Points with Hotel Rewards

You can also reach companion pass status by transferring hotel points to Southwest. You usually don’t get a great exchange rate when transferring hotel points to airlines, but in this case there is an amazing option. With Marriott’s Hotel + Air packages, you can redeem hotel points for seven nights at a hotel, bundled with airline miles from carriers that include Southwest. The Southwest packages start at just 270,000 Marriott points for a week at a category 1-5 hotel and 120,000 Southwest points, which is more than enough for Companion Pass status! Once you complete this redemption by calling Marriott and the points hit your Southwest account, you’ll get Companion Pass status. It is that easy. I did it several years ago when I stayed at the JW Marriott in Cannes during the annual film festival, which was one of my best redemptions ever.

More Ways to Earn Your Companion Pass

There are other ways to earn those qualifying points:

• Shop though Southwest’s online portal—and you don’t need the credit card to do so.
• Rent cars from companies including Hertz, Dollar, Alamo.
• Enroll in Rapid Rewards Dining and go out to eat.

What Else You Should Know

• You can add your companion on to any ticket, even if your company purchases it.
• Companions can be added on to all Southwest-operated flights, including their new international routes to places like Aruba and Costa Rica.
• Companions don’t have to fly with you on every part of your journey—if you’re flying roundtrip and need to leave on a business trip, your companion doesn’t have to return with you. However, they do have to fly with you to get the flight for free. You can’t book a flight for you and a companion and then cancel your ticket.
• You can change your companion up to three times during the validity of your Companion Pass. But no double-dipping! Each time you add a new companion, all existing reservations with your old companion will be invalidated.

by Brian Kelly , www.travelandleasure.com

Travelore Tips: How To Rack Up Miles To Fly For Free

Plane tickets take a huge chunk out of your travel budget -- international flights can cost $1000 or more, which could be an extra month of travel if you're frugal. Rack up some air miles and you can hit the mile high club for free.

Take A Number

Frequent flyer numbers are the numbers that each airline assigns you in order to keep track of your miles and give you rewards for your loyalty. Each airline calls their program something different. For example, United's is MileagePlus and Delta's is Skymiles -- but really all that matters is that you save them until you have enough for a free ticket.

You get a number for every airline you fly, but the fastest way to a free ticket is to stick with one airline (the whole loyalty part) and make sure it flies to international destinations. Remember to fill in your frequent flyer number every time you book a ticket.

Plastic in Your Pocket

Getting into debt is a terrible idea, but charging purchases on a credit card earns you miles. If you can commit to paying that sucker off, then charging your flights makes sense mile-wise. Most cards will offer a large mileage bonus for your first purchase and some will offer bonus miles for purchasing certain products. Some cards are for specific airlines and others, like American Express will let you use their points to buy tickets for almost any airline's program.

Buddy Up!

Many airlines have formed partnerships with other airlines around the globe -- you'll see brands like SkyTeam, Star Alliance, and Oneworld. These partnerships are like the 69 of airline travel -- everyone wins. Here's how this works: Let's say you live in Chicago and you've decided to do all of your traveling on United. You can earn miles by flying on United, or, you can earn miles by flying on any of United's partner airlines such as Lufthansa, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines, or South African Airways (among others). The miles you rack up can be redeemed with either United or its partners, scoring you a free trip somewhere way cooler than the windy city (sorry, Chicago). Sometimes there are restrictions so make sure you check before your itinerary is set in stone.

OTP TIP: When traveling, don't always take the fastest route. If you don't mind spending a few extra hours in the air, use sites like Kayak or Hipmunk to book your flights to connect through remote places and earn some extra miles. Sometimes this option can even be cheaper.

Eyes on the Prize

Airlines don't just partner with other airlines; they cross-breed with companies in a number of industries, offering miles for purchases of random items like dog food (Purina) and soup (Healthy Choice). So how does puppy chow get you to Australia for free? Meet David Phillips, better known as the "Pudding Guy," who took the miles-collecting thing to a whole new level in 1999 when he bought $3000 worth of pudding to rack up enough miles to fly him anywhere he wanted, for free, for life. While buying six tons of snacks may not be for you, know that airlines run all kinds of miles promotions with these partners and if you're in the market for free travel, keep an eye out for miles in the aisles.

Gift Yourself

Airline websites sell all kinds of things that can score you miles. When you purchase products or services that have agreements with the airlines you can bank even more miles without having to get on a plane. Your family never has to know their birthday gifts earned you a free ticket!

Racking up miles may feel like clipping coupons, but knocking down the cost of airfare is one less barrier to discovering the world. You'll be glad you held up the check-out line with your thousands of pudding cups like a senior citizen when boarding that flight the fuck out of here.

Contributed By: Sarah Binion

Travelore Tips: How To Use Those Confusing Frequent-Flier Miles

It's almost like having a million free miles and nowhere to go. Travelers today are frustrated in their efforts to spend frequent flier miles with labyrinthine rules, blackout dates, and jam-packed airplanes blocking every attempt to cash in.

Charisse Jones, national business travel correspondent for USA Today, joined Carl Quintanilla on TODAY to offer fed-up fliers a guide to making the most of those miles they have piling up. The veteran reported admitted the complex – and constantly changing – rules and regulations are tough to keep up with.

“My mind is always spinning,” she told Quintanilla.

Basic math is part of the problem. The frequent flier programs, which American Airlines rolled out first in 1981 with 283,000 members, are bursting at the seams with hundreds of millions of fliers today. “But there are only so many seats an airline is going to make available ‘for free’ or as a reward,” Jones told Quintanilla. 

“Airlines have also cut back on the number of seats they're flying, period. They want to make sure their planes are full since an empty seat is a money loser.”

So what’s a flier to do when there’s not enough to go around? For one, Jones said, hang on to miles for a flight that’s worth it -- think dream trip to Paris, not a domestic hop valued at $300. Be prepared to spend big, with cross country flights costing up to 60,000 miles according to Jones.

Don’t let your miles expire; even a small purchase like a magazine subscription can keep your account active said Jones.

And finally, “Don't despair,” she said. “There are other experiences, and merchandise you can purchase with your miles.”

Airlines are ponying up some tempting consolation prizes for the foiled reward-seeker, starting as low as United’s 100 mile song download and flying as high as Delta’s GE Profile 57 bottle wine center for 240,800 miles, which, according to Jones, is “really for the person that has so many miles they can’t spend them all on travel.”

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For as little as 10,000 Delta miles, Jones said you might be able to “get a pair of baseball tickets to see your favorite teams play...and we’re not talking about sitting in the bleachers eating popcorn and drinking beer. These are the VIP seats.”

46,150 American miles can get you a night at the five-star Athenaeum Hotel in London's tony Mayfair district, Jones told Quintanilla.

Or, you could invest in some good karma and give your miles to charity. Jet blue will kick in $10 for every 1,334 points (miles) you donate.

Contributed by Dana McMahan

Unused Frequent-Flier Miles 'Hidden Treasure' for Passengers

                                                  Contributed By Genevieve Shaw Brown (@gsbrownabc)

Two-thirds of Americans collect reward miles and points for travel, but the vast majority of us don't know how many we have. And even worse is that more than 25 percent of us are letting frequent-flier miles expire.

Your lost miles are a win for the airlines, said Brian Kelly, world traveler and founder of ThePointsGuy.com, the web site that conducted the research. "It's in the financial interest of the airlines for you to let your miles expire. They make money when you don't maximize miles."

Outstanding miles are a liability to the airlines, Kelly said. "All those miles have to be accounted for," he said. "That can affect their quarterly results."

Delta recently changed its SkyMiles program. Now, when a person dies, their miles die with them. They're the first airline to do so.

The airline also said earlier this year it would require a spending minimum in addition to distance flown to earn miles, making it harder for travelers on a budget to accumulate miles in the first place.

Kelly just returned from Brazil. He flew first-class and paid $2.50 for his ticket. Safe to say he keeps track of all his points.

But he flies 150,000 miles a year. Most travelers don't fly anywhere near that much. Most don't even fly enough in a year to rack up enough miles for a free flight.

It's those people, Kelly said, who are leaving "orphaned miles all over the place." But he said you don't necessarily need to be a frequent flier to earn miles.

"If you're going to shop at Walmart anyway," he said, "why not go through the airline portal to earns miles for your purchases?"

Members of Delta's SkyMiles, for example, can go to skymilesshopping.com and earn a mile for every dollar they spend at Walmart. Lesser-known brands offer up to 4 miles for every dollar spent.

"Travelers are sitting on hidden treasure. You need to treat your miles like money," Kelly said. "Even if you only have 4,000 miles, use it to buy magazines, something."

He acknowledges that it can be difficult to keep track of miles and points and recommends travelers keep all their information in one place. He uses AwardWallet.com and Tripit. Tripit, he said, will send an email when miles are getting close to their expiration date.

And because travelers love to hate the airlines, isn't the best revenge to use their own programs to your advantage? Kelly thinks so.

"It takes a little time to figure out," he said. "but once they're all in one place, it doesn't have to be a full-time job."

After all, he said, "Having your head in the sand is exactly what they want."