By Nancy McLaughlin
The Southwest Companion Pass is THE best deal in travel, and it allows one person to fly free with you from the time you earn it until the end of the following year.
Download Lyn’s top 10 things you MUST know to earn the Companion Pass cheat sheet below:
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Go To Travel Gal reader Norma C., of Tampa, Florida, earned her 110,000 (currently 135,000) points and her pass using her current Southwest credit card, the SouthwestHotels.com portal and one new credit card sign-up. Easy peasy!
Norma travels three to four times a year and had already earned just more than 12,000 Southwest points.
In June, she applied for the Southwest Rapid Rewards Business Premier Credit Card and earned 60,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 in purchases. That offer is still available, and anyone can get approved for a business card!
By July of the same year, Norma earned 6,000 anniversary points on the one-year anniversary of holding her Southwest personal card. Read about and compare all Southwest credit card options HERE.
SouthwestHotels.com
Since Norma lives in Tampa, it was easy for her to take advantage of a weekend stay in Orlando at the Floridays Resort which she booked through the SouthwestHotels.com portal.
Norma said she earned a significant amount of Southwest points with that stay. Normally, you can earn 10,000+ points per night on select hotels within the portal.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal
To earn additional points, Norma used the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal as a starting points for her online purchases.
Here you can get step-by-step instructions for how to use the Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal to ensure you never miss a point!
If you want to be reminded when you are shopping to go through the Southwest portal, GET THIS BUTTON which will automatically activate points directly at more than 850 different stores while you do your on-line shopping.
Go to Travel Gal also updates the BEST deals in the shopping portal weekly, so you can make sure you’re getting as many points as possible for more FREE flights on Southwest!
Through the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal, Norma subscribed to the Motley Fool for $99 and netted the remaining 3,600 Southwest Rapid Rewards points she needed to earn her companion pass.
Norma emailed Lyn about her experience, saying, “Thank you Lyn for everything. Without your help this wouldn’t have been possible!”
Want to read more stories of how readers earned their Southwest Companion Pass? Check out our Reader Stories.
Author
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Lyn Mettler is a longtime travel writer for US News & World Report, USA Today 10Best and The TODAY Show who created Families Fly Free, a program that teaches families her simple system to use travel rewards to fly for free. She is one of the industry's foremost experts on collecting and using travel rewards with her expertise featured in major media outlets and on podcasts, television and radio.
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