Southwest announced late last night that they are finally starting service to Hawaii in 2018. Companion Pass holders rejoice — two-for-one tickets to Hawaii will be huge for those with the points, and the extra competition could mean better prices for everyone. We don’t know from which airports they will service Hawaii, but we can surmise from the promotion for an easy Companion Pass for California residents that they intend to fly from California.
Get a Companion Pass while it’s still easy to get
Who knows what may change in the future, but at the moment, the Companion Pass is pretty easy to get. If you live in California, you may have been targeted with the promotion to get a Companion Pass by opening one Southwest credit card and making a single purchase (See: INCREDIBLE: Companion Pass with a single purchase!). If you live in California and didn’t get targeted, don’t despair — several people reported speaking with someone at Southwest who claimed that this promo would be open to all California residents beginning October 18th. At this point, that’s just a rumor that could be totally wrong — but I think there is some hope.
Remember that the signup bonus on the business version of the Southwest card is still at 60,000 points (find a link on our Best Offers page). The signup bonuses on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus and the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier, have dropped back down to 40,000 points each. Still, if you were to open the business version and one of the personal versions, you would have 104,000 Rapid Rewards points after meeting the minimum spend on both cards. You would then just need to either spend an additional $6,000 on one of the cards or earn through a qualifying partner such as the Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal.
But be careful about when you meet the spend
Remember that your Companion Pass will be good for the rest of the year in which you earn it and the entire following year. In other words, if you opened two of those cards today and met the spend next week, you would earn your points on your next statement and only have the Companion Pass for the rest of this year and all of next year — it would expire on December 31, 2018. However, if you wait to complete the spend on both cards and your signup bonus points post in January 2018, your Companion Pass would be valid until December 31, 2019. That’s nearly two years of someone flying for free with you.
A related caution on that — I would recommend not completing much of the spend before December 31st. You certainly may be safe in completing the spend after your December statement has closed — at that point, Chase should theoretically not post any more points to your account until your January statement closes. Why risk it?
Another reason to be careful about spend: Fraud
You may have thought to do most of the spend now. For example, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business card requires $3,000 spend in 3 months. Perhaps you plan to spend $2800 now and to leave $200 to spend in January. That might be a bad idea. Last year, at least one Flyertalk member reported being the victim of a hacked card. Fraudulent charges put them over the spend threshold — and the signup bonus posted too soon. There are a host of things that could go wrong in this department — a bill gets charged too early, a merchant accidentally charges you twice….I’d leave yourself plenty of room to avoid any mistakes. If it takes you a week or two in January to finish up the spend, that’s better than getting hacked and potentially missing out.
You definitely want to avoid a world in which one signup bonus posts in 2017 and the other signup bonus posts in 2018 — that would mean no Companion Pass at all. Remember that all 110,000 points need to be earned in the same calendar year. Any spend you do this month and next month will not count towards the 110,000 points. You’ll need to spend more than $6,000 come January if you start spending early.
You technically have to complete the minimum spend within 90 days
The signup bonus terms state that you must meet the minimum spend within 90 days of the day you open it. Therefore, if you were to open two of the Southwest cards today, you would technically have until Wednesday, January 10th, 2017 to meet your spend. Again, you want to complete your minimum spend on both cards on or around January 1st in order to ensure your bonuses post in 2018. You definitely do not want to earn 60K this year and 40K in January or vice versa — then you would have no Companion Pass at all.
Another option is that you could open the cards today and then immediately send a secure message to Chase to ask them for the date by which you must complete your minimum spend. Some folks have reported getting a response that was a bit longer than 90 days. While you would certainly be taking some risk with this path, I would think that you have better standing if you have a message in writing with the date. You might even be able to send that secure message before applying.
So what is this Companion Pass, anyway?
If you aren’t familiar with the Southwest Companion Pass, it is achieved when you earn 110,000 Rapid Rewards points or more in a single calendar year (including from credit card signup bonuses and spending). When you have a Southwest Companion Pass, you can name a companion and he or she can fly for free* with you an unlimited number of times throughout the validity of the pass (*you pay just the tax on the companion ticket — currently $5.60 one-way on domestic flights). You can even change your companion up to 3 times per calendar year. In my opinion, this has long been the best deal in domestic travel, and it only gets better with service to Hawaii. See our Complete Guide to the Southwest Companion Pass for more information.
Bottom line
This is terrific news on many fronts. First, more competition should mean better prices for everyone. Second, as award availability can sometimes be tough to come by on other carriers, it will be a bonus to have Southwest in the market. While we don’t yet know what their Hawaii pricing will be, it would seem reasonable that there will often be award tickets available for fewer points with Southwest than the expensive “anytime” awards that are most commonly available with other carriers. There will surely be more information in the coming days and weeks and we’ll certainly have the details as they come out. Personally, I can’t wait. At long last, Aloha, Hawaii. I’ll see you soon!
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[…] Pass as Southwest has announced their intention to begin selling tickets to Hawaii this year (See: Southwest to Hawaii: get your Companion Passes ready). Earning the Companion Pass now means that you should probably have a valid pass when they begin […]
[…] Southwest to Hawaii: Get your Companion Passes ready […]
These comments sure deteriorated fast…
I for one am pumped about the news!
Agreed here. If you don’t like SW, feel free to fly whatever othe airline you’d like. People like to crap on SW, but they’ve always been affordable and good to me. Great that they’re flying to HI, and will hopefully mean more competition and lower prices for everyone. Thanks for the post!
[…] It’s official! Southwest will start selling tickets to Hawaii in 2018. Companion Pass holders, rejoice! No specific date was given and we don’t yet know what […]
Hopefully it’s the price of basic economy except with free checked in bags.
Hi Nick just to be clear.
The bonus points won’t post until you meet the minimum spend for each card. My wife and myself applied for both (have two kids) Premier 2 k (60k miles) and Business 3k (60k miles)
We applied Oct 1st 4 different browsers. They all went straight to pending. Called reconsideration line all approved. Now we have 10 k spend. I can float funds on gift cards, car insurance pay early etc… our December close date is 12th. Would it make sense to do 5k to 6k after Dec 12 th then 4k ish on Jan 1st
I will sm chase to get in writing spend date.
Thanks
You are correct that the signup bonus points won’t post until you’ve met the spend.
Yes, I think what you’re saying makes sense, provided you’re planning to divide that 4K spend for January over the 4 cards (leaving $1K of the required spend to do on each). I’d suggest leaving that much room in case of the issues noted in the post — a hacked card, a merchant that accidentally double charges, etc. Honestly, my advice here is probably overly cautious….but the value you stand to lose in terms of an entire lost year of the companion pass if your bonuses post in 2017 is enough to warrant extra caution my opinion.
Wow, sooooo much disingenuous clickbait…
1. Southwest won’t be flying to Hawaii until 2019 – they don’t even have FAA approval for ETOPs yet. Reality check: your shiny new companion pass won’t last that long. Lots of things may change by then.
2. I predict that once these flights start up, either the companion pass will be massively devalued, or it won’t be valid on these routes. How stupid do you think the management of Southwest really is?
But I know, you need eyeballs and clicks to pay the rent, so whatever…
Really? If you get the CP in 2018 it will be good through 2019.
You may be right that things can come up between now and then but if they do actually fly in 2019 a CP gained the right way will still be valid.
troll much Jack?..since nothing is finalized all is speculation. You can apply your worldview where nothing works out and life sucks, but your really trying to be a psychic pessimist. SW got certified for over water flights and started service quickly to more Caribbean islands than anticipated… So Hawaii is not a logistical wall.
The management of SW is smarter than most, they have only devalued their points twice since merging with AirTran and not by much…if you want to talk devaluation go look at award costs on DL or AA. The companion pass has never been limited or devalued, other than restricting hotel points transferred in counting toward it…and as was mentioned you can earn the CP until the end of 2019 right now….so your pointless predictions do nothing but confirm your a glass half empty kind of guy…so go outside and grumble about the kids on your lawn and yell at some squirrels, I hear that’s what grumpy old farts like you do for fun.
Which airports in Cali?
We don’t yet know. They haven’t yet announced the routes.
Worthless without a direct out of Chicago.
4300 miles from MDW to HNL. Good luck finding a 737 that flies that far with a plane full of passengers and bags.
Because Chicago is the center of the universe? Chicago is a craphole and their airports suck. If you want to guarantee you be somewhere on time, fly to/from or through Chicago.
*Not be somewhere on time. Sorry, us Steves are slow
Could you imagine a more miserable 5.5 hour flight? No thanks
Yeah. Anything on Spirit cross-country. Southwest economy class is perfectly fine.
No different than any other U.S. carrier in economy for the same routing.
um, I think there’s one thing different–I think Southwest has configured their planes with only 2 bathrooms instead of three–and on a 5-6 hour flight with 175 passengers this is inadequate and has caused problems in the past especially after food/bev service. Crew telling folks they could not queue in the aisles, etc. One extra bathroom does make a difference so make sure you fluid restrict…..
Lol. You are wrong, as was your post on DOC that said the exact same things. Several of WN’s planes have 3 lavs–two in the back, and one up front.
@JakeP-.Glad to know that some planes are configured with three. But I promise you they do not provide that equipment on all their longer flights. I’ve actually never been on a 3 lav southwest plane– and we fly frequently on Southwest cross country (east coast to both California and SEA) and have also flown 4 times round trip to locations in Caribbean and Central America always with just 2 bathrooms…., and this post here also indicates that problem as well http://crankyflier.com/2017/01/17/my-first-southwest-international-flight-to-cancun-could-have-gone-better-trip-report/
Flying WN is absolutely no different than any other big carrier in economy. To think otherwise is just dumb. You need premium to fly 5 hours then yes, WN won’t do much for you.