Katie has been in the points and miles game since 2015 and started her own blog in 2016. She’s been freelance writing since then and her work has been featured in publications like Travel + Leisure an...
Edited by: Keri Stooksbury
With years of experience in corporate marketing and as the Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Qatar, Keri is now Editor-in-Chief at UP, overseeing daily content operations and r...
& Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
5 comments
Ralph
December 05, 2019
One big negative about the companion pass is that you and your companion’s reservations are separate. When you checkin online, and have do so exactly 24 hours in advance to get a decent boarding position, and good seats, you have to check in twice, once for your and once for you companion. Yes, the first person on can save a seat, but one is not supposed to do, and its a pain. Southwest answer to that is to buy early checkin, but doing that for 2 people is another $60 on a round trip. Which on the short trips we take on SW would be wipe out much of the companion savings. After a year of a companion pass, we decided the hassle was not work it.
Katie Seemann
December 06, 2019
Hi Ralph,
Checking in at just the right time can be a bit of a pain, but for most people it’s a small price to pay when you can get a 2 for 1 fare! I’m surprised you didn’t see much value in the Companion Pass, but not everything is perfect for everyone. Personally, my family has gotten thousands of dollars of value out of ours in the 3 years we have had it.
Thanks for reading!
Beach
December 06, 2019
SW status match challenage is the easiest to complete as you have 90 days to do six segments (6 one-ways, 3 round trips, etc) then you get SW status for all of the next calendar year. Instead of say flying direct from SoCal to Vegas, you can book muliple one ways, SoCal to NorCal, NorCal to AZ, AZ to Vegas, same in reverse and you’re award the status and often all these legs qualify for $39 fares when SW is having their flash sale.
If don’t have any airline status, but do have hotel status even if you got it through a credit card, here’s what you can do. SW will status match AA, AA will challenage match Hyatt status, MLIfe/(MGM) will status match Caesars Rewards, Caesars will status match the Wyndam, and the Wyndam will status match most hotel chains.
Joshua
May 09, 2023
A List Preferred is now worth more. The $8 WiFi passes are not per day any longer, as indicated above, but now per leg. So two stops means $24 for WiFi.
Hopefully, SWA will see the error of their ways soon. Even as other airlines are making domestic WiFi free, SWA is doubling or tripling its cost. For poor WiFi to boot.
BTW, I am a 30-year SWA guy with over 1000 flights and nearly 25 years of Companion Pass status. No matter how much I like SWA, they did this poorly.
Katie Seemann
May 10, 2023
Hi Joshua,
I agree that making this change to the Wi-Fi cost is a bad customer service move (especially, like you said, the Wi-Fi is poor most of the time). I have updated the post so it reflects the current pricing. Thanks for reading and for catching this.
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