Southwest Airlines Frequent Flyer Program

Rapid Rewards is the frequent flyer program of Southwest Airlines. On becoming the Rapid Rewards member, you begin to accumulate the reward points as you fly with Southwest and participate with its partners.

Earning of Rapid Rewards

Number of Rapid Reward points you earn are directly related to the amount and the type of fare purchased. The fare to be used for the computation is the base fare. Base fare is multiplied with the points per dollar (ppd) to get the total number of points earned while flying. Points per dollar spend (ppd) are further based on class of fare purchased and the tier level of the passenger.

Earning while flying Southwest So, the base tier level of passenger will have 12, 10 and 6 points per dollar on Business Select, Anytime and Wanna Get Away fare classes respectively. The next higher tier level of A-list passengers will have 15, 12.5 and 7.5 ppd respectively for the three classes of fare. The highest tier level of A-List Preferred passengers will have 24, 20 and 12 ppd for these three fare classes.

These ppds have to be multiplied with the base fares to get the total number of rewards points for that flight.

Earning while spending with partners

Credit cards: There are four different categories of credit cards, namely Premier, Plus, Premier Business and Plus Business cards from Chase using which you will be entitled to earn the reward points.

Premier card entitles you to earn 50,000 bonus points if you spend USD 2000 in first 3 months, earn 2 points per dollar spent on purchases with Southwest and Airtran and also on purchases with hotel and car rental partners. 1 point per dollar is earned on making other purchases. On the anniversary of the card, you get 6000 points. Further, you earn 1500 Tier Qualifying Miles for every $10000 spent which will help you upgrade to or A-list Preferred.

Plus Card also entitles to same benefits as that of Premier Card except that you earn 3000 points for , anniversary of card and there in no provision for earning Tier Qualifying miles for higher tiers of membership.

Premier Business Card has all the benefits of Premier Card and allows you to access free business card tools and sign up for free cards to employees.

Plus Business Card has all benefits of Plus Card and allows you to sign up for free cards to employees and access business tools.

Hotels: Hotel partners of Southwest Airlines include Wyndham group, Marriott Rewards, Best Western, Mlife, choicehotels.com, LaQunita Inns and Suites, Hyatt, spg (starwood Preferred guest), The Venetian Las Vegas, the Palazzo Las Vegas and Carlson Rezidor hotel group. Each qualifying stay in these hotels will entitle you to earn 600 RR points. If you use RocketMiles to make hotel booking, then each night of stay will earn you 1000-5000 RR points.

Car Rentals: Alamo, Avis, budget, Dollar Rent a car, Hertz, National Car Rental and Thrifty Car rental companies are the partners of Southwest. You can earn 600 RR points by choosing to book with these. SuperShuttle shared rides and ExecuCar sedan rides between hotel, home, office to/from airport will earn you 150 points for one-way and 300 points for round trip.

Shop & Dine Southwest partners with online retailers and you can earn 10 RR points for every dollar spent. These can be accessed through ‘Rapid Rewards Mall’. You can also make use of thousands of partnering pubs, restaurants, clubs and bars for dining and earning RR points. You just have to register upto 5 credit cards from which you will be spending to get these points.

Flowers Shop for flowers at 1-800-Flowers.com and earn 1000 RR points for spending USD 29.99 or more.

Besides these ways of earning the miles, there are other methods as well. 12500 points for signing up for DISH, up to 7500 points for paying electricity bills through Energy Plus (limited to people living in CT, IL, MD, OH, NJ, NY or PA) and Everything Energy (limited to people living in Texas) and 15000 points at signup and 500 points every month by switching to Reliant Energy.

Points are also earned with certain speciality service providers such as sharing opinions with e-Rewards Opinion panel, joining e-Miles and responding to the marketing messages as per your own interests, spending on buying agreements for office and virtual office and by joining Valued Opinions for providing your opinion on marketing research surveys.

Spending/Redeem Rapid Reward Points

Rewards points can be redeemed by air travel. Precisely how many points will be required will depend on the route of travel between destinations in USA. These can also be used for redemption by way of staying at hotels, taking car rental services and buying gift cards.

Tier Levels of Southwest Airlines

There are 3 tier levels of Southwest Airlines.

You need 25 one-way qualifying flights or 35000 Tier qualifying points to attain the A-list status.

To attain the next level of A-list Preferred status, you need to have 50 one-way qualifying flights or 70000 tier qualifying points.

The highest level of Companion Pass can be achieved by flying 100 one-way qualifying miles and 1,10,000 tier qualifying points.