Tag: credit cards

The Southwest Companion Pass -What is it, Why you want it, and How to get it.

by admin

What is the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass?

Basically, the Southwest airlines Companion Pass is a level of status within Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program that allows the holder to bring their designated companion on any flight with them for free (plus taxes starting at $5.60). This is a buy-one-get-one-free pass wherever Southwest flies, even international flights (taxes are higher for these flights, but it is still an amazing deal). But wait, it gets better! Your flight can even be booked on points, and your companion can join you just for taxes. The Companion Pass also lasts for the entire year in which you earn PLUS the following year. That means if you time it right, you can get almost two years of BOGO flights from one pass!

Why you should want your own campanion pass

Being able to bring a friend, spouse, child, etc. on any flight for free is a game changer. It opens up the entire US for weekend getaways since the cost is now so cheap. Living in Colorado makes this great for us. Southwest has (at last count) 77 different destinations from Denver. But even if you don’t live in a major Southwest hub, you are still one stop away from dozens of destinations.

Southwest Airlines destinations

We’ve also used Southwest to connect us to international gateway airports for award flights. Sometimes either the award your booking doesn’t allow you to connect to your home airport, or there isn’t availability. That’s where Southwest and the Companion Pass can step in. You can now build you own connection before or after your award trip to make your award trip complete.

How to get your companion pass

Now for the hard part. It does take a little work to get your own Companion Pass, but I do mean a little. You’ll need to earn 125,000 eligible Southwest Rapid Rewards points in one calendar year. That may seem like a ton, but it is well within reach. 2021 will mark the eighth consecutive year my family has held a Companion Pass. All of those passes were almost entirely due to accruing credit card points. Almost all points you earn with Southwest are eligible for a Companion Pass. The main exceptions are points transferred in from outside programs (Chase Ultimate Rewards and hotel loyalty programs). What IS eligible is more important. Points earned from paid flights, using their shopping or dining programs and points earned from their Rapid Rewards Credit Cards. The last one is the major way to earn them because sign-up bonuses also count towards your Companion Pass!

Our 2020/2021 Companion Pass

The current bonus on the personal cards will earn you 80,000 points and the business cards will earn you 100,000. We’ve always earned the pass by combining one business card sign-up with one personal card sign-up bonus, when the bonuses were much lower. Now by completing one sign-up bonus along with a few partner offers you could get your companion pass much easier. Once you’ve earned your Companion Pass, the points are still yours to keep and use for flights. Since the points are worth about 1.5 cents each, you’ll have about $1875 in points with which to book flights. If you always fly with your companion you’ll have an astounding $3,750 in free flights!!!

Timing your companion pass

As I stated earlier, your Companion Pass is valid for the year in which you earn it and for the entire following year. By earning the pass early in 2021, you would have it all the way through 2022. If you sign up for both the Performance Business card and any of the personal Rapid Rewards credit cards, and then meet the minimum spend for just the first tier on both cards early in 2021, you would have your companion pass for almost two full years. This is how we plan our pass every two years, alternating between myself and my wife for the past eight years. It is best to apply for the “Performance” business card first, then any of the personal cards (we recommend the Priority version for its annual perks). As always, we would love it if you used our links to support the blog. All versions of the Chase Rapid Rewards credit cards can be found here.

Thank you for using our link!

By completing the first tier of the Performance Business credit card ($5,000 in spend in three months) you will receive 70,000 points. Any of the personal cards will award you an additional 50,000 points (after spending $2,000 in three months). Combined you’ll get 120,000 points in bonuses and at least 7,000 more points for the spend on the cards. You’ll then have your Companion Pass for the rest of 2021 and all of 2022. You’ll also have at least 127,000 points to spend on flights. Even with the current lack of travel, there is a lot of hope that things will return later in 2021, and you’ll still have all of 2022 to use the pass.

What is the first place you want to fly, once you feel it is safe to do so? Let me know in the comments!

Our 2020 Travel Plans

by admin

We already have two international trips booked and a third on the way for 2020.  At Peak Award Booking we always advise to book early to find the best award flights.  One of our trips was planned about 15 months ahead, this allowed us to get the credit cards and points we needed for this trip in time to be able to book at exactly 11 months out.  Doing so allowed us to plan an amazing trip at the high-demand time of spring break.

Cancun all-inclusive

Our first trip is a long weekend to the Cancun area for a friend’s wedding.  This will be just for my wife and myself, no kids!!!  The wedding is at an all-inclusive resort that isn’t affiliated with any rewards program.  We could’ve booked this using our Chase Ultimate Rewards through their portal at 1.5 cents/point, but we tend to find better value for these points by transferring to airline partners.  Instead we paid cash through a third-party booking company that had a very discounted rate available.  We try to book direct whenever possible, but this deal was too good to pass up.  We will be using Southwest points and our companion pass (earned via sign-up bonuses on Chase’s Southwest cards) for our flights down to Mexico.  We’ve been able to book Southwest flights at buy-one-get-one free for the last six years, and as soon as my wife’s points post in January we will have it again for another two years.  This perk has saved us thousands of dollars.  The return flights on Southwest didn’t really work for us, so we will be flying United on a basic economy ticket.  Luckily (or by planning), we have the United Explorer credit card and we can check one bag each, take a full-size carry-on and board early.  This negates most of the issues of booking basic economy. 

maldives and singapore in luxury

Our next trip is almost exactly a month later.  Spring Break 2020 will take our family of three to Doha, the Maldives, Singapore and possibly Malaysia.  We booked our outbound flights using American Airlines miles gained from several of their credit cards.  They have both personal and business cards from both Citi Bank and Barclay.  The four options with bonuses that occasionally reach 70k miles, give lots of options to build up your balance.  Anywhere in the US to the Maldives will cost you 70k miles per person, plus taxes.  We completely drained my AA balance to get three seats.  The first leg is just a regional jet on American in domestic first class, but our 2nd and 3rd flights will be business class on Qatar Airlines in their amazing QSuite configured business class.  We will be spending one night in Doha before our flight to the Maldives.  We had a free night award at any Marriott hotel worth a maximum of 30,000 points that we earned with the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Card.  The St. Regis Doha was exactly 30,000 points, making this a no-brainer decision for a quick stay.  One more QSuite flight and a seaplane trip will get us to the Maldives.  Here we will be using points we gained from American Express Hilton branded credit cards as well as one free night certificate from the Hilton Aspire credit card to stay at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island.  The Conrad Maldives considers their Overwater Bungalow a base room redemption, this allows us to use points and book five nights for the price of four!  We will be splitting our time between the Overwater Bungalow and the Beach Villa.  We’ve heard that with children that the beach villa is a much better option, but we still couldn’t pass up the option to stay in an over-water bungalow for free.  Not only will we be staying for free for six nights, we also will get $500 off our seaplane flights and diamond status from our Aspire Card.  Diamond status will most likely not get us any upgrades, but we will get free breakfast, happy hour (free drinks and snacks) and afternoon tea (more free snacks).  The savings on food alone really adds up!

We will then depart from the Maldives and head to Singapore aboard Singapore Airlines in business class.  We booked this flight as part of a one-way flight from the Maldives to Los Angeles with a stop-over in Singapore.  The total cost of these flights was 109,000 miles each plus $100/person for the stop-over.  We transferred points from Chase to Singapore Airlines to book these flights.  Most of the points came from business card sign-ups from their Ink line (Ink Preferred, Ink Cash or Ink Unlimited).  These two flights will be on their lie-flat equipped planes.  We’ve already selected our meals for the flight from Singapore to Los Angeles using their “Book the Cook” menu, where you can select your meal ahead of time from a large menu of options (lobster thermidor, anyone?).

Singapore Airlines Lobster Thermidor

In Singapore for our “stop-over”, we will be staying at the Conrad Centennial Singapore for five nights.  Again, we will be using points we earned from either new Amex Hilton cards or from upgrade offers from American Express.  We used the fifth night free option again to get an extra night free.  Diamond status will get us a possible upgrade, free breakfast and lounge access.  While in Singapore we took advantage of an Expedia promotion that offered 50% off activities to get a lot of excursions we had already planned.  We will be visiting the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Bird Park, River Safari, Aquarium, Singapore Flyer and more at a nice discount.  We may also take a day trip over to Malaysia for the LegoLand Park.  After an exhausting five days in Singapore, we’ll fly in Singapore Airlines business class to Los Angeles.  Hopefully, we will have enough diversions to keep a six-year-old busy for 15 hours in a metal tube. 

Upon landing in Los Angeles we’ll spend a night at the Crowne Plaza LAX Airport.  We redeemed a free night from our IHG credit card to book the closest hotel to the airport.  The next morning, we will trade the luxury of Singapore business class for the simplicity of Southwest.  We’ll be using points and our companion pass to once again get us back home for the cost of just taxes on the flight.

african safari and victoria falls

Our last currently planned trip will be my 40th birthday trip.  It’ll be just my wife and I again.  After cycling through about eleventeen different options (Venice and Rome, Hawaii, Tokyo, Bora Bora and Easter Island…), I finally found what I wanted all along…  Perfect flights to Southern Africa.  We will spend two weeks going through Botswana to Victoria Falls.  We’ll have eight days of insanely expensive luxury safaris and three days of adventure activities in Victoria Falls.  What better way to celebrate turning 40 than jumping off a bridge or rafting one of the world’s most dangerous rivers?

Victoria Falls

Our only points usage will be for flights, but they are nice flights indeed.  We will have a second turn in one year on Qatar QSuites flying into Johannesburg.  This is another 150,000 AA miles being used, which will leave us with only about 50,000 left (time to build those back up!).  Our return was booked using United miles, from Victoria Falls back home.  The long-haul segments will be on Kenyan Airways on angled flat business class seats.  Not the best business class product in the world, but it made it a much quicker journey than any other options.  The total of 140,000 United miles were raised from their Chase MileagePlus credit card as well as a transfer from some more Chase Ultimate Rewards. 

I’m sure we will add a few more trips using our companion pass to domestic locations.  We will probably try to get to Chicago to eat non-stop for a weekend, or someplace south to warm-up when it is cold (looking at Maui and the Grand Wailea).  Visiting family in Wisconsin is also on our short-list too.

If your New Year’s resolution is to travel more, reach out to us here at PeakAwardBooking.com to get started.  We can help you build your points, or use them to the fullest, so that 2020 can be the year you get to see the world!