One of the crucial advantageous choices within the journey business is the Southwest Companion Go. This move grants you the privilege of bringing a companion alongside without cost (excluding relevant taxes and costs) on a vast variety of Southwest Airways flights all through the move. For frequent Southwest flyers, this profit alone can simply quantity to hundreds of {dollars} saved yearly.
Nonetheless, the query arises: How does one earn this extremely coveted golden ticket? To acquire the move, it’s essential to earn 135,000 tier qualifying factors (or full 100 qualifying flights) inside a calendar 12 months. This achievement will grant you the move for the rest of the present calendar 12 months and the whole thing of the next 12 months. Whereas incomes such a considerable variety of factors could appear daunting, you may expedite the method by benefiting from the welcome bonus provided by a Southwest cobranded bank card.
Let’s delve into the steps to acquire the move and discover how one can profit from this unbelievable privilege as soon as it’s in your possession.
Learn how to earn the Southwest Companion Go
To earn the Southwest Companion Go, you could have two choices: Earn 135,000 Companion Go-eligible factors, or full 100 qualifying one-way flights inside a calendar 12 months.
You may earn Companion Go-qualifying factors by way of varied means, corresponding to by flying with Southwest or participating with its companions. The latter consists of making purchases through the Southwest buying portal, reserving accommodations with Southwest companions and utilizing a Southwest bank card to your on a regular basis bills.
Choosing a Southwest cobranded bank card is usually the only method to earn the Companion Go because it permits you to earn factors effortlessly, and the welcome bonuses depend towards the requirement as nicely. Moreover, holders of a Southwest cobranded bank card obtain 10,000 Companion Go-qualifying factors yearly. This successfully reduces the overall requirement to 125,000 factors per 12 months.
Southwest provides varied bank card promotions that facilitate incomes the Companion Go.
- Southwest Speedy Rewards Plus Credit score Card: Earn 75,000 bonus factors after spending $3,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening.
- Southwest Speedy Rewards Premier Credit score Card: Earn 75,000 bonus factors after spending $3,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening.
- Southwest Speedy Rewards Precedence Credit score Card: Earn 75,000 bonus factors after spending $3,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening.
- Southwest Speedy Rewards Premier Enterprise Credit score Card: Earn 60,000 bonus factors after spending $3,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening.
- Southwest Speedy Rewards Efficiency Enterprise Credit score Card: Earn 80,000 bonus factors after spending $5,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening.
Should you intention to earn the Companion Go, we suggest incomes your qualifying miles early within the 12 months. It’s because the move stays legitimate for the remainder of the present 12 months and the whole thing of the next 12 months. For instance, in case you earn a Companion Go in March 2024, will probably be legitimate for the remaining 9 months of 2024 and the whole 12 months of 2025.
Day by day Publication
Reward your inbox with the TPG Day by day publication
Be part of over 700,000 readers for breaking information, in-depth guides and unique offers from TPG’s consultants
Associated: I flew to Atlanta for the day to earn a 2-month Southwest Companion Go — here is why (and the way it went)
Learn how to use the Southwest Companion Go
As soon as you’ve got earned a Companion Go, Southwest makes it extremely straightforward to make use of.
Step 1: Arrange your Companion Go
After incomes the Companion Go, Southwest will ship you a congratulatory e mail inside just a few days to acknowledge your important achievement. To trace your progress in actual time, log in to your Southwest Speedy Rewards account on Southwest.com.
Upon receiving the e-mail, click on the offered hyperlinks to arrange your preliminary companion selection. It’s essential to present your companion’s full identify (matching their ID), delivery date, e mail tackle and Speedy Rewards account quantity.
Alternatively, you could have the choice to designate your companion by calling Southwest. Nonetheless, because the on-line choice course of is easy, there is no such thing as a must contact the service by cellphone for this specific step.
Step 2: Verify flight availability to your complete journey get together
Now that you’ve got chosen a companion, it is time to benefit from the thrilling half: reserving a flight the place your companion can fly without cost (excluding taxes and costs). However earlier than you make a reservation, it’s essential to guarantee there are sufficient out there seats on the specified flight to your complete journey group. Including a Companion Go fare is simply potential if a seat is out there for buy.
For example, if you’re a household of 4 planning to journey with one individual utilizing the Companion Go, seek for 4 seats on Southwest.com. It is vital to notice that each one 4 seats needn’t be in the identical fare class. If solely three seats stay with Wanna Get Away fares, however there are additionally Anytime and Enterprise Choose fares out there (along with the cheaper fares), you may proceed together with your reserving.
Step 3: E-book flights for everybody apart from your companion
To make use of your Companion Go, the following step is to make flight reservations for everybody in your journey group, excluding the companion. For example, if you’re a household of 4 with one grownup holding the Companion Go and the opposite grownup being the companion, you need to initially ebook tickets for the Companion Go holder and the 2 children. The companion’s tickets shouldn’t be booked at this stage.
Most vacationers will discover it handy to ebook flights on-line at Southwest.com. Nonetheless, if desired, flights will also be booked over the cellphone with Southwest cellphone brokers. You may pay for these flights with money or Speedy Rewards factors, as each strategies are suitable with the Companion Go.
Should you select to buy these tickets with money, keep in mind to incorporate the Speedy Rewards numbers of all vacationers in your reserving. There is no such thing as a must miss out on incomes factors, as even kids can earn frequent flyer factors on Southwest.
Step 4: Make your companion’s flight reserving
After getting made flight reservations for all members of your journey group besides your companion, it is time to safe a flight reservation for that particular person. To make sure that you do not miss out on the ticket availability you confirmed in Step 1, it’s essential to ebook your companion as quickly as potential. That is notably important for flights that are inclined to replenish shortly, corresponding to throughout peak Christmas dates to and from peak journey locations.
To proceed, the Companion Go holder (the primary grownup in our instance) ought to revisit the Southwest web site and log in to their Speedy Rewards account. Entry the “My Account” part situated on the prime of the homepage.
On the left-hand facet of the display, you may see a bit referred to as “My upcoming journeys.” There, you need to see the flight reservation you simply made, together with every other upcoming journeys with Southwest. When you’ve got many flights reserved, you may must click on the “See all journeys” hyperlink for your whole reservations to look.
Beneath your flight particulars, you may see a button that claims “Add Companion.” Click on on it.
You will discover that the “Journey & Value Particulars” are already pre-filled with the flight info and the price of the taxes and costs. On this case, for a home one-way journey, that value is simply $5.60 to your companion to fly.
Click on “Proceed” to go to the following web page that features “Passenger & Fee Data.” There, you will see that your companion’s identify and figuring out info crammed in. With the whole lot pre-filled, there’s little or no likelihood of a reserving mistake.
Lastly, you may be prompted to pay the relevant taxes and costs to safe the flight reservation for the companion. When you’ve got a bank card already saved to your account profile, you need to use that to expedite the method.
I’ve discovered that reserving subsequent flights with a Companion Go takes only a minute or two after you see the way it works the primary time. It is that easy.
Extra Southwest Companion Go suggestions and methods
Though utilizing the Southwest Companion Go is nearly all the time straightforward, there are just a few quirks.
You will obtain separate affirmation numbers
Whenever you ebook flights for a gaggle or household collectively, everybody could have the identical affirmation quantity. Nonetheless, with the Companion Go, your companion will all the time be assigned a distinct Southwest affirmation quantity than the remainder of the get together. Whereas this is not an enormous deal, it will probably matter for the technique surrounding Southwest’s distinctive check-in coverage.
When it is time to test in, having two reservation numbers can sluggish you down within the Southwest fastest-finger recreation to get a prime boarding place precisely 24 hours earlier than your flight. I like to recommend having two units able to test you and your companion in concurrently. Should you test in a single individual first after which the opposite individual subsequent, you could lose out on among the greatest boarding positions.
Associated: Is Southwest EarlyBird Test-In price it?
It’s essential to name to vary companions
Whilst you can change your companion thrice in a calendar 12 months, Southwest Companion Go holders ought to know that this requires a cellphone name. There is no such thing as a method to change a companion on-line.
The wonderful print on Southwest’s website says that it could take as much as 21 enterprise days for processing. In our expertise, the companion is all the time modified practically immediately. It should take some time for a brand new Companion Go card to reach within the mail to your new companion. Nonetheless, the change is often applied for on-line reserving functions inside seconds.
Be careful for reservations shut along with totally different companions
Whilst you can change companions as much as thrice a 12 months, you will not be capable to change your companion till you’ve got accomplished all journey together with your present companion. When you’ve got two journeys shut along with totally different companions, issues can get a bit difficult.
For instance, when you’ve got a visit together with your little one on June 1 and one other together with your partner on June 15, you will not be capable to add your partner as a companion to that second journey till after June 1. It’s theoretically potential that the June 15 flight might promote out earlier than June 1, leaving your partner excessive and dry for the June 15 journey.
Though this case would not come up typically, it is an vital consideration if you’re planning to journey throughout peak instances and/or on fashionable routes. If a flight does promote out, you could end up within the place of getting to ebook a brand new flight for your self at a better value to search out an itinerary with house to your companion.
Associated: 13 classes from 13 years’ price of Southwest Companion Passes
Backside line
Utilizing the Southwest Companion Go is a breeze, and bonuses on Southwest bank cards make it fairly easy to earn. The Southwest Companion Go is the proper method to journey extra typically this 12 months with out breaking the financial institution.
