XVP: Southwest DING Fares

[Trudy]

Southwest is pretty generous with it's frequent flyer program. First of all
if you earn a free voucher, you use it exactly like a ticket, no limits to so
many FF seats per plane.
Once you have earned one they just send it to you in the mail, we currently
have 8, they do expire but you can always sell them or give them to friends
etc.

Another offer they have is their free companion pass. After so many flights
you get a card for a specific person ( spouse etc) and they fly WITH you for
free. You are allowed to change the name a few times and it is only good for
one year, you must keep booking the required number of flights for another
year.

But the BEST part is that we needed to fly to Florida, my hubby used a free
voucher we had accumulated and I STILL got to fly FREE with my companion pass.
Can't beat that !!
They just acquired ATA but it presently is run separately, in the future we
should be able to get good flights from PHX to Hawaii
Happy Traveling

Trudy -

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[hockeystl]

Southwest is pretty generous with it's frequent flyer program.

First of all

if you earn a free voucher, you use it exactly like a ticket, no

limits to so

many FF seats per plane.

The SWA Rapid Rewards program has been dramatically devalued in the
past year.

It used to take 4 flights for a free RT, now it takes 8.

SWA has now forced eBay to pull all listings (temporarily?) of RR
tickets, so now instead of being worth $320 each, they're only worth
the value of the actual RT ticket..which is about $200 for MOST
travelers who have access to the cheap DING fares. This means 1 RR
credit is now only worth $12.50 instead of $20.

Many SWA partners have also increased what is needed to earn a
credit. For example, the BankOne SWA Visa now requires 20% more
charged to get a credit, and Diners Club recently increased the
amount charged to get a credit by 100%.

As a result in the number of trips required and the increased efforts
needed to obtain partner credit, there are going to be a LOT of RR
members who have credits expire in the upcoming year!

SWA gives identical credit for someone flying from Chicago to Detroit
as they do for someone flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle. With
this recent devaluation of the RR program, taking SWA on longhaul
flights doesn't make sense (or cents) for the traveler who can plan
ahead. 2 RR credits are worth about $25 versus 6000 miles which are
worth at least $60 (more if you use them on international or first
class travel). Southwest doesn't have capacity controls, but there's
mumbling that this might be implemented in 2006.

I was a longtime SWA flyer/loyal customer (3x Companion Pass holder),
but in the past 6 months, I've flown Northwest (yes, out of St.
Louis!) more than I've flown Southwest.

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