If you fly with a partner — spouse, best friend, travel buddy — the Southwest Companion Pass might be the best deal in all of travel rewards.
Here's the deal: earn 135,000 Rapid Rewards points in a calendar year, and Southwest gives you a Companion Pass. Your designated companion flies free with you (plus taxes) on every flight for the rest of that year and the full following year.
Free. Every flight. For up to two years.
Why It's Genuinely Remarkable
If you fly Southwest 8 times a year with a companion, and the average flight costs $200, that's $1,600 in companion savings per year. Two years = $3,200.
No blackout dates. No seat restrictions. Any flight you can book with points or cash, your companion books for just the taxes (~$5.60 each way).
Here's the part people miss: you don't spend your points to earn the pass. The 135,000 points you accumulated to qualify are still sitting in your account, ready to use. So you effectively have 135,000+ points to book your own flights — and your companion rides along free on every one of them. That's the equivalent of 270,000 points of value for a couple, without spending a single extra dollar.
There's no other deal in travel rewards where you get a second ticket free on every single flight for two consecutive years.
How to Earn the Pass
The 135,000-point requirement:
Points come from three sources:
Flying on Southwest (a few points per dollar spent)
Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards
Partners (hotels, car rentals, shopping portal)
Flying alone almost never gets you there. The card strategy does.
The Personal + Business Card Double-Dip
Southwest has two personal cards and two business cards, each with their own signup bonus. The key insight: points from all four cards count toward your Companion Pass threshold.
Personal cards:
Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus ($99/yr) — 50,000–60,000 point bonuses
Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier ($149/yr) — 55,000–60,000 point bonuses
Business cards:
Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business ($99/yr) — 60,000–80,000 point bonuses
Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business ($299/yr) — 80,000 point bonuses
The math:
Strategy | Expected Points |
|---|---|
1 personal card SUB (elevated offer) | 50,000–60,000 |
+ 1 business card SUB (elevated offer) | 80,000 |
+ some organic spend to hit thresholds | 10,000–15,000 |
Total | 135,000–155,000 ✅ |
Two cards. Two signup bonuses. Companion Pass for the rest of the year plus all of next year.
🔗 See what Rapid Rewards points are worth → Points Valuation
The Timing Play
Apply in January. This is critical.
Your Companion Pass is valid for the rest of the calendar year you earn it, plus the full following year. Earn it in January → valid through December 31 of the following year → almost 2 full years of free companion flights.
Earn it in October → valid through December 31 of next year → just 14–15 months. Still great, but you're leaving time on the table.
The ideal scenario: apply for the personal card in late December or January, get approved, hit the spend threshold in January or February. Pass activates in February. You now have 23 months of free companion travel.
⚠️ Critical timing warning: Do NOT hit your signup bonus spend threshold before January 1st. The points from your signup bonus count toward the calendar year they post — not the year you applied. If you apply in December and hit the spend requirement before December 31st, those bonus points count toward the current year's threshold. You'd earn the pass right before it expires (December 31st), wasting almost the entire benefit. Apply in late December, but make sure you don't hit the spend threshold until after January 1st. Let those bonus points post in the new year.
Who This Is For
The Companion Pass is a game-changer for:
Couples who travel together — most obvious use case. Every flight, partner flies free.
Parents traveling with a child — designate the kid as companion for family vacations.
Best friends who take a trip per year — even one trip makes this worth it.
Business travelers whose spouse could join them on occasional trips.
It's a narrower play than building Chase UR or Amex MR — Southwest flies domestic US routes plus Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Iceland (coming soon). But for domestic and near-international travel with a regular companion, nothing beats it.
The Rules Worth Knowing
You designate one companion per year. You can change it 3 times per calendar year if your situation changes.
The pass covers all Southwest flights — including flights booked with points. Pay 10,000 Rapid Rewards points for a flight, your companion books for $5.60 in taxes.
The 135,000 points must be earned in the same calendar year. Points from the prior year don't carry over to this threshold.
Bonus points count — your signup bonuses, referral bonuses, and partner points all count toward the 135k. This is how the card strategy works so cleanly.
Business card points count toward your personal Companion Pass. You don't need separate business passes.
What to Do If You Already Have Southwest Cards
If you've held the personal Southwest cards before and aren't eligible for the bonus again, the business card is your play.
The Performance Business card alone can get you within striking distance of the pass, and business cards don't count toward Chase 5/24. Even if you're at 4/24 on personal cards, you can add the business card without burning a slot.
The Annual Fee Math
Card | Annual Fee | Ongoing Perks |
|---|---|---|
Rapid Rewards Plus | $99 | 3,000 anniversary points, free first checked bag (you + 8 companions), Group 5 boarding, 10% flight discount code, 25% inflight credits |
Rapid Rewards Premier | $149 | 6,000 anniversary points, free first checked bag, Group 5 boarding, 15% flight discount code, A-List TQP boosts |
Premier Business | $99 | 6,000 anniversary points, free first checked bag (you + 8), Group 5 boarding |
Performance Business | $299 | 9,000 anniversary points, free first checked bag, unlimited Extra Legroom upgrades (48hr window), Preferred/Standard seat selection at booking, Global Entry/TSA PreCheck credit ($120 every 4 yrs), 25% inflight credits |
The anniversary points offset the fees meaningfully. The Plus card's 3,000 points are worth ~$48 at the standard 1.6 cpp for Southwest redemptions. The Premier's 6,000 points are worth ~$96 — effectively bringing a $149 card down to ~$53/yr. But the real perk here is the free checked bag: at $35–$40 per bag each way, one round trip with a checked bag more than pays for the Plus card's annual fee.
The Bottom Line
For couples and regular Southwest flyers, this is the best deal in travel rewards.
Earn once, fly free for up to 2 years
No blackout dates, no seat restrictions
Every flight — not just some flights, not just low-demand days
The play: apply in January. One personal, one business. Hit the spend thresholds. Pass activates by February. Two years of free companion seats.
There isn't a better deal for the people it's designed for.
I'm personally heading into year 5 with the Companion Pass. My wife and I have saved over $20,000 on flights in the last four years — every trip, she's flown free. It's the single best thing I've done in travel rewards, and I recommend it to every couple I talk to.
Reply and tell us where you'd take your companion first — we love knowing what you're chasing.
— Austin 🤌