- Earn 110,000 qualifying rapid reward points
- Fly on 100 flights
If you read the ‘What is it‘ page, you now know that the pass can theoretically be earned for almost 24 months. If you haven’t read this page here is a summary. The companion pass is good for the remainder of the year in which it is earned as well as the entire following year. This means if it is earned January 1st 2016, the pass is good until December 31st 2017.
How can you earn the companion pass for 24 months?
So theoretically you can earn the pass for 24 months. However, you may be thinking, yeah its theoretically possible to earn the pass for 24 months, but it’s not actually possible to fly 100 flights in 1 day right? You are correct. It isn’t possible to earn the status for 24 months by flying. Even if it was possible, why would you want to do that to yourself? The reason why a companion pass for 24 months is possible is because you can qualify for it using qualifying rapid reward points. The idea is to “store” qualifying rapid reward points in other forms or accounts and deposit them into your rapid rewards account sometime at the begging of January.
What are the qualifying rapid reward points?
There are many ways to earn qualifying rapid reward points. Here are some of the most popular.
- Rewards from flights flown on southwest
- Rewards converted from other programs such as Marriott and Hyatt
- Rewards earned from shopping online through the southwest shopping portal
- Rewards earned from E-rewards
- Rewards earned from e-miles
- Rewards earned from rocketmiles
- Rewards earned from the dinner club
- Rewards from using a Southwest brand credit card
Basically any rapid reward points that you earn will count towards earning the companion pass as long as the rewards are not a bonus offer. There is one exception to this, and that is the bonus offers associated with Southwest brand credit cards. We will discuss this further below.
What qualifying rapid reward points can be stored?
In order to fully take advantage of the southwest companion pass, it is best to earn it at the begging of January. To do this, you need to strategize a little bit. The three accounts that can “store” rapid rewards points to some extent are:
- E-rewards
- e-miles
- Southwest brand credit cards
Other potential accounts:
- Marriot
- Hyatt
- Best western
- Club Carlson
- Some other hotel chains
What is a good strategy to earn the companion pass at the beginning of January?
As implied previously, the best strategy in earning the companion pass is to accumulate points in accounts that can store southwest rewards, then transfer these points to your rapid rewards account at the beginning of the year. The most important of these types of accounts is the Southwest brand credit card. Southwest often offers 50k mile sign up bonuses for their credit cards if a certain spending minimum is hit within 3 months. This spending amount is normally $2,000. Each dollar spent on the card is worth an additional mile, so if the spending requirement is met, you would receive 52k+ miles. Southwest offers this sign up bonus frequently for both a business and personal cards which puts the potential southwest qualifying miles you can earn via credit cards to 104k+ if you get both cards. If you have questions about signing up for a business card, you can read more about it here. Assuming you qualify for both cards and you meet the spending requirement, you will receive 104k rapid reward miles (RRM). The key is to get these rewards to post at the beginning of January. This can be tricky as you never know when Southwest will offer their special 50k credit card sign up bonus offers. Ideally, you will sign up for the card no earlier than October of the year prior to the year you plan to receive the companion pass. The 50k bonus miles will post to your rapid reward account right after the billing cycle closes for the period in which you meet the spending requirement. Be careful you do not meet the spending requirement prematurely.
If you meet the spending requirement in October, you will get the bonus miles to post in November, ultimately ruining your goal of getting the pass in January.
In order to get the bonus to post at the beginning of January follow these steps.
Credit Card Intro Offers
Account opened in October or November
- Do not hit not to hit the $2,000 spending requirement initially. Minimize spending on the card until December.
- When available, go into your chase credit card account and change the bill due date to the 5th of the month. This may take one account cycle before this is allowed.
- After the statement closes in December, (should be after the 5th some time) spend the additional money required to hit the $2000 requirement.
- Make sure that you have your dates planned out correctly so that the $2,000 is spent within the 3 month spending period required.
*Note: the credit card activation fees do not count towards the spending requirements.
Account opened in December
The approach here depends on when your statement closes. If for some reason your statement will close in December, do not hit the $2,000 spending requirement until after the December close date. If you are unsure when your first statement will close, call the number on the back of the card to get clarification. Most likely if you open the card in December, your statement wont close till some time in January. This means you should try and hit the $2,000 spending requirement on each card before your statement closing date so that the miles will post early January.
*Note: the credit card activation fees do not count towards the spending requirements.
Account opened in January and later
If you happen to get the intro offer at the beginning of the year, all you have to worry about is making sure you hit the spending requirement within the 3 month period. The sooner the better. Ideally you would want to hit the spending requirement for each card within the first billing cycle so that you maximize the time you hold the companion pass.
*Note: the credit card activation fees do not count towards the spending requirements.
The former steps will set you up with around 104,000 miles at the beginning of January. If strategically planned for, you will not have to spend much more money to obtain the pass.
Surveys and Offers
Both e-rewards and e-miles offer customers the ability to perform surveys or purchase products in exchange for rapid reward miles. Normally, the return on investment for these surveys are not worth the time it takes to complete them. However, you must think bigger picture. These survey accounts can be used to store rapid reward points. Then be used to deposit these points into your rapid rewards account at a time you select. Therefore, they can be used to credit a hefty number of rapid rewards to your account at the beginning of January, which is very appealing. The approach here is to start accumulating miles in these accounts well before you plan on earning the companion pass. If you spend 6 month accumulating miles in these accounts you should easily be able to add another 2900 to 5400 miles to your rapid rewards account come January.
Worth mentioning:
E-rewards is relatively easy to gain rewards through however they have a 2400 mile transfer limit per 30 day period. If you do not care about getting the companion pass at the beginning of January, you could add 4800 miles to your rapid rewards account by mid February. The posting time for E-rewards to post the miles to your rapid rewards account is relatively fast. I requested my miles on the January 1st and received them January 5th.
E-miles is a harder way to gain rewards, but there doesn’t appear to be a limit to the amount you can redeem in a 30 day period. The most rewards at a given time you can redeem is 3000 miles. I have received indications that these miles take longer to post to your rapid reward account. However, I requested miles on December 28th and they posted January 1st. The miles probably transfer from e-miles to rapid rewards accounts once a month, all at the same time. If this is true, the date at which they transfer could change making it hard to predict when to request the miles. That is, should you request the miles from emiles in December or January? I took a risk that they would post by the end of the first week in January when I redeeming them on the 28th of December. If I was wrong and they posted December 31st, they wouldn’t have counted towards my companion pass. Another disadvantage of emiles is that the miles in your account do expire if not used within 365 days from the end of the quarter in which they were earned .
These three accounts can get you to around 109400 miles within the first week of January. The remaining 600 miles can easily be obtained by increasing your initial spending for each of your credit cards from $2000 to $2300. The cheapest approach to gaining the additional 600 miles would be using the shopping portal. Depending on the actual store promotions through the portal, 600 miles could be earned by spending as little as $60 at the right store. All of the programs listed above under qualifying rapid rewards points can be used to generate miles that will count towards your potential 600 mile deficit.
Just want the companion pass now?
If all of the stargazing just gives you a headache you can just sign up for the Southwest Rapid Rewards plus card and Business card at any time. Just make sure you get your bonus miles to post to your account with enough time to make up the additional 6,000 miles you need to reach the 110,000 miles for the companion pass. For personal cards, if the plus card is offering 50,000 bonus miles upon sign up, I would recommend signing up for that card over the premier. The reason why is there is a $69 annual fee apposed to a $99 annual fee. All of the perks associated with the premier personal card are included in the premier business card which you will likely need in order to get your companion pass. Below is an exclusive offer for 50,000 miles for signing up for the Southwest Plus card. This is more than you normally get with this card, so it is a great opportunity to get the bonus miles you need while reducing the initial annual fee.
The Southwest Premier Business card almost always offers 50,000 bonus miles for signing up. This card can early be found on the chase credit card website.