Why I Love the Southwest Companion Pass (and How to Get One)

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There are few things that bring me as much joy as (basically) free travel, and through strategic use of travel rewards credit cards I’ve been able to make it happen. One of my favorite strategies? The Southwest Companion Pass promotion that lets me bring a guest for almost-free every time I fly the airline!

In this article I’ll explain why the Southwest Companion Pass is amazing, along with the Southwest Companion Pass trick for getting one. After reading this article you’ll even know some strategies for booking trips before you earn your Companion Pass!

What is the Southwest Companion Pass

Southwest gives its most loyal flyers some serious benefits, from priority boarding to free internet all day every day. But in parallel to its regular loyalty tier, Southwest offers another perk: Companion Pass.

What is the Southwest Companion Pass? In short, it allows the holder to bring their designated companion with them on any flight with an open seat for just the cost of mandatory government fees. Within the United States it’s just $5.60 cents each way, while international tickets could run up to $150 for your companion. That’s still a lot less than an entire plane ticket!

How long does the Southwest Companion Pass last? It’s good for the rest of the year in which you earn it and all of the next year! If you’re really strategic about when you earn your Companion Pass (more on that in a moment) you’ll have it for around 23 months.

How does Southwest Companion pass work? Just buy your ticket as you normally would, using points, flight credits or your credit card, and then add your companion after you’re done – keep reading to see screenshots of exactly what it looks like.

The even more amazing part of the Southwest Companion Pass is that there’s no limit to how many times you can use it until it expires. By the time it’s all done I will have used my companion pass for Hawaii, Florida, Mexico, Los Angeles, Texas, Nashville and more. It’s saving us thousands of dollars on travel and allowing us to travel more, totally guilt-free.

If your travel patterns change, the good news is that you can switch your companion up to three times per year with a quick phone call. I’ve done it and it was no big deal!

Southwest Companion Pass trick

Ok now your big question is probably “how do you earn a Southwest Companion Pass?” There are two ways.

The hard way to earn the Companion Pass is to fly 100 one-way trips/50 round trips or earn 135,000 Companion Pass qualifying points in a single calendar year – that would require about $16,000 in spending if you stick to the least expensive Wanna Get Away fares (which start at earning 6 points per dollar but get more valuable as you hit A List and A List Preferred status).

But I’d rather do things the easy way, which is to open two Southwest credit cards, put some spending on them and call it a day. Points that you earn from credit card spending and sign up bonuses count toward 135,000 qualifying points, plus credit card owners get a 10,000 Companion Pass qualifying point boost in their tally – so you’ll really just need to collect 125,000 qualifying points in a single calendar year.

1) The first step to earn the Companion Pass is you’ll open a Southwest business credit card. You’re eligible for this even if you don’t have a “traditional business” – even a side hustle like selling on Marketplace or mowing lawns counts, as those are ways you can work to earn money.

Southwest offers two business credit cards (find them on the right side of that page).
As of this writing the $99 Premier Business Southwest credit card starts you off with 60,000 bonus points after spending $3000 in the first three months, while the $199 Performance grants you 80,000 bonus points after spending $5000 in the first three months. The more expensive business credit card also comes with a $120 credit toward TSA PreCheck or Global Entry plus four upgraded boardings and 365 WiFi credits.

For a frequent Southwest flyer, I think the Performance Business credit card is worth the extra fee. We chose that option for my husband and have definitely gotten our money’s worth. As of this update, choose the Performance business card if you want to earn your companion pass without any extra spend or flying.

2) Your second step to earn the Companion Pass open a Southwest personal credit card. Chase has tightened up their credit standards in 2024 and it’s harder to get the business card if you’ve just gotten a personal card with them, so the order matters here. Chase also wants to make sure you don’t open more than 5 personal credit cards (from any bank) in 24 months. All three personal cards currently come with a 50,000 point sign up bonus offer after you reach $1000 in spending during the first three months.

The three personal Southwest credit card options have some important distinctions even though the spending thresholds and sign up bonus points earned are the same. Note that you’re only allowed to have one of these three cards, and I don’t think the mid-tier card is even worth considering.

The least expensive option out of pocket is the $69 Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus credit card – I got this in haste without realizing just how much I’d be flying Southwest! It doesn’t really give you any fancy extra perks, and it’s important to know that this card charges foreign transaction fees.

In my opinion, the best choice (and what I had my husband get) is the $149 Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority credit card. This is the most expensive option but the fee is worth it! Upon account opening the Priority comes with a $75 Southwest credit every year and an extra 4500 points (worth around $70) on every anniversary – plus no foreign transaction fees and some other nice perks.

So right now you probably think I’m off my rocker for claiming that spending $348 on credit card fees is worth it. But I promise it is! Because in addition to your Southwest Companion Pass, you’ll also walk away with at least 136,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points that you can use to book travel (since you’ll earn Rapid Rewards points from your spending as well)! That’s worth more than $1900, but if you bring your companion on every flight it’s worth close to $4000. That’s a pretty incredible ROI. For a real-world data point, I recently used 58,000 points per person for round trip tickets from Ohio to Hawaii for spring break – and of course, my companion’s ticket was just $5.60 each way in taxes.

If you’re a family with multiple adults and multiple kids, each adult can open the same two credit cards and take a kid with them for free! All of a sudden, family travel got a lot more affordable.

Another great feature is that once you have your credit cards, you can share your referral link with friends to get Southwest points if they sign up for credit cards. Those points count toward your companion pass! If you time your referrals to December at the end of your first year, they will count toward extending your companion pass for an additional year. More on this later in the article.

You can always check your progress in your Rapid Rewards account status tracker on the right side.

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How to Maximize Your Southwest Companion Pass

Now that you’ve figured out how to earn a Southwest Companion Pass, the real fun begins: using it!

Southwest makes it really easy to book flights for your companion. When you’re looking at flights, make sure that there’s at least one additional seat in addition to your own available. However, you only need to book one ticket with your money, credits or Southwest Rapid Rewards points. After you’ve booked your ticket, you’ll see a big blue plus icon on the flight details screen of your app or a white button in the reservation box on the website – both clearly say “Add Companion”. You’ll be taken through screens to confirm the flight and then select how to pay the taxes and fees. If you’ve already designated your companion, the whole thing takes just a few seconds!

But there are a few little Southwest Companion Pass tricks I want to share with you from my own experience to help you squeeze out the most value.

Adding a Southwest companion – READ THIS

Once you earn enough points, you’ll see this beautiful banner show up in your Southwest Rapid Rewards account. Congratulations! But not so fast…

Once glitch we’ve noticed is that the online form to add a companion does not have a field for your companion’s Rapid Rewards number. Hopefully this will be changed at some point. I recommend that you call Southwest customer service at 1-800-I-FLY-SWA and have them add the companion with their Rapid Rewards number. They’re very friendly and the process is quick!

If you add your companion online, a new “customer number” will be assigned. While that’s not the end of the world since companions don’t earn points or qualifying flights, it’s one more thing to keep track of (especially if your companion has other non-companion flights or prior credits.

When to add a companion on Southwest flights

First, one of the things I love about Southwest is the ability to quickly hit the “change” button to reclaim credit if the price of a booked flight drops. It’s so simple and quick, and has saved us thousands of dollars. But if you have a companion itinerary attached to the flight, you need to either cancel the companion and then make the change or call Southwest to request a fare adjustment. I’ve done both.

This gets me to my next point: sometimes you’ll want to add a companion ticket right away if you expect the flight to sell out (like spring break to Hawaii) but sometimes you can wait on the companion if the route doesn’t look busy (like Nashville in summer). Postponing the companion ticket makes it easy to check frequently for fare drops, but if I see that Wanna Get Away fares are almost gone that’s a good time to add my companion to ensure a seat.

However, even if you don’t see a seat available for a companion just keep checking. Thanks to their generous policies people cancel Southwest tickets alllllll the time.

Below you can see how the reservation screen changes when you add a companion. You’ll also see that I’ve used a different strategy for each leg of the flight (one was paid with points and the other with flight credits so I had to book them separately anyway).

Booking flights before you have Companion Pass

The next tip is a really important one for families. How can you book a companion seat if you don’t have Southwest Companion Pass yet or if you know that you’ll need to change your Southwest companion between trips? Obviously if you’re traveling to popular destinations during school breaks it’s really important to have enough seats for everyone! There are a few ways to handle this.

Option 1: If you know you’ll fly Southwest often, just book everyone together as usual. When you earn your Companion Pass, call Southwest and tell them to switch all of your companion’s flights to the Pass. I did this on a day when I wasn’t especially busy and it took around 45 minutes for a dozen flights. The representative was very helpful and we got a lot of points in my account and flight credits back in my daughter’s account. You can see above that I’ve done this for one of our upcoming flights, which I fear might sell out because it’s a popular travel time.

The flight credits are a bit of a nuisance because your companion doesn’t need them! I wound up making and cancelling several “dummy” bookings as Wanna Get Away+ fares, because then the credits became transferrable and could be moved to my account. Again, it was kind of a pain to do because there were lots of credits and you can only use three payment methods per booking.

If you’re booking everyone on points, this option is really simple and what I recommend.

Option 2: Book your Southwest flight as usual for everyone who will not be a companion, and then book a refundable Anytime fare or Rapid Rewards points tickets for the companion-to-be. If your companion will be an adult, that’s all there is to it. If your companion will be a child and you’re essentially just holding a seat for them, on some routes the website will specifically ask if you want to link their reservation to your own – that avoids unaccompanied minor fees and allows you to book routes with a plane change.

Once you designate your companion, you can cancel that flight for a full refund to your original payment form and then add them as your companion. This is my favorite Southwest Airlines Companion Pass trick because it allows you to hold the seats you need without racking up tons of flight credits!

Book flights the day new schedules are added

Southwest adds about six weeks of flights at a time, and at the bottom right corner of the search page you can always find out when the next round of flights will become available. I usually see them pop up around 6-8am Eastern time.

If you’re looking at popular routes (aloha!) it’s common to see fares double a few days after release. Sometimes they’ll go back down, and if they do you can use the “change” feature to get your points or credits back. But I have never regretted buying the morning of flight releases, and when I’ve been late to the party I’ve almost always been frustrated. Even if you’re just speculating, it’s worth locking in those tickets while you can because you can change them until 10 minutes before your flight.

Get more Southwest Points from other credit cards

The Southwest credit cards are fine, but after the sign up bonus I wouldn’t say they’re amazing for earning the volume of points you need for monthly trips as a family. What’s my Southwest Companion Pass trick for getting the most value for my travel? I top up my Southwest points by transferring from my Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. It comes with a nice 60,000 sign up bonus for a modest $95 annual fee, plus it earns 3 points per dollar on dining and 2 points per dollar on travel. Those can become Rapid Rewards points instantaneously when I transfer from the Chase app. As of this update, the Sapphire Preferred also gives you a $300 credit to use in the Chase Travel portal the first year – use your Southwest points for flights, your Sapphire points for a Hyatt hotel and that travel credit for your rental car to get a totally free family vacation.

I pair that card with the Chase Freedom Unlimited, which has no annual fee and earns 3 points per dollar on dining and drugstores plus 1.5 points per dollar on everything else. That made paying for braces less painful! Unfortunately the Freedom Unlimited can’t transfer points on its own (only with a Sapphire card) and it also charges foreign transaction fees so it’s not a great card on its own.

How to requalify for the Southwest Companion Pass

So you’ve opened the credit cards and earned your companion pass for all of this year and the next year. Congrats!!!! But many people want to know how to requalify for their companion pass when it expires. There are two ways to do this.

First, and probably the most common, is to close both Southwest credit cards after 12 months and then reapply for them 24 months after the last time you earned the sign up bonus. That can be a great option if you haven’t been opening too many other credit cards, as you’ll get a quick re-stock on points to fund your travels. You won’t be paying the annual fees either, though as I calculated above it’s pretty easy to come out ahead on the fees.

Second, you can keep the cards open and put in a little effort to requalify. That’s what I’ve done and I’ll show you exactly how it works. First, all Southwest credit cards come with “anniversary points”; by holding the top business and personal cards, I get 16,500 points every year that can be used for flights and count toward Companion Pass. Second, just by holding any Southwest credit card you get an extra 10,000 points toward Companion Pass (but not redeemable for flights).

The final piece is referring friends. I promise that once you have traveled with a Companion Pass for a year, you’ll want to shout about it from the rooftops! For every friend or family member who signs up for a card using your referral link, you’ll get 20,000 points (sometimes as high as 25,000 points). And since getting a Companion Pass is typically a two-card strategy, helping one person join the club could net you 40,000-50,000 in Companion Pass qualifying points plus you can spend those on your own flights!

You can also top up your Companion Pass qualifying points by flying, obviously. Keep in mind that flights booked on points don’t count, but flights booked with credits – whether the $75 provided by the credit card or old credits you have from price drops – do count.

Bonus tips: make sure your teens have PreCheck

Updated October 2024

I’ve had my companion pass for two years now but learned something new today (I’m updating this article on a free Southwest flight using a WiFi credit provided by one of our cards)… The latest updates to TSA PreCheck allow 13-17 year olds to use the fast lanes with their parents as long as they’re traveling on the same reservation.

My son turned 13 last week and we had a rude reminder at the airport this morning: Southwest companions get their own reservation numbers. Obviously I knew that, but I didn’t know it. Normally that’s not a big deal, but for teens that means they are not allowed in the PreCheck lane with their parents!

There are a few ways to tackle this. The best is for parents to get Global Entry and add their children. As of this month, kids and teens can now get their Global Entry free with a parent. Thankfully the Performance Business credit card comes with a Global Entry (or TSA PreCheck) credit. The downside is that everyone needs to go for an enrollment appointment which can be tricky to schedule if you don’t have an international re-entry planned soon. Right now our entire family is conditionally approved but there’s no enrollment center that’s convenient for us and the interview office was closed last time we flew in from overseas.

The other option is to get your teen their own PreCheck. This is generally easier because you can do the interview at many locations and times – in our case, it’s at a local Staples store during most business hours. Even if you already have plans for the PreCheck credit on your Southwest Performance Business credit card, it’s provided by plenty of other great travel rewards credit cards that you can consider getting for their welcome bonuses, lounge access and more perks.

Keep your options open

One of our contributors (who I won’t name here) shared a great tip recently for those of us who can’t make up our minds about a destination or date. This Southwest Airlines travel hack isn’t specific to Companion Pass, but loyal fliers will want to know how to maximize their experience with the airline!

Last year I knew we wanted to go to Hawaii for spring break but we hadn’t settled on which islands. Without thinking, I logged into my Southwest app the day tickets went on sale and bought tickets for my husband and I for two different islands (using our Southwest points, of course). Imagine my surprise when I woke up two weeks later to see that one of the flights had been cancelled! I learned that it’s Southwest’s policy to cancel one flight if there’s no possible way an individual could take both. Their stance is understandable in light of their generous cancellation policy, which just requires 10 minutes notice before takeoff.

If you’re traveling with another person and need to temporarily hang onto two flights, you can each book one of the routes in your own Southwest account. The key is that you should not include the other passenger’s Rapid Rewards number until you’re sure of which flight you want to take. For example, John can book a flight for himself and Mary without including Mary’s membership number. Likewise, Mary can book a different flight for John without including his membership number.

Please don’t abuse this loophole! While I haven’t personally used it, in some circumstances it may be very helpful for people. If you do book multiple flights, be sure to cancel the one you don’t need as soon as your plans are firm so that you open up availability to other traveler.

Southwest Companion Pass FAQs

Before you go…

I know this is a ton of information to digest, so I suggest that you read over it a few times to make sure you’ve got it down! Be sure to read about my favorite travel rewards credit cards for families to help you travel more for free.

Still planning? Pin this for later!

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