Southwest is one of the best airlines in The United States that offers a lot to its customers as compared to other popular airlines. Which includes the cheapest flights, early bird check-in option, free baggage allowance, and no flight change or cancellation fees. Here we are going to talk about 10 best tips that you should know before flinging in Southwest flights and this will help you a lot to save more.
1. Get the Southwest companion passed this is a special pass that allows a companion to fly for free with you for up to two whole calendar years. You can change the companion up to three times per year. Now, in order to earn the companion pass, you're going to need one hundred qualifying flights or one hundred and ten thousand rapid rewards earned in a calendar year. Earning 110,000 rapid rewards may sound like a lot, but it's actually extremely easy.
2. Find the best Southwest credit card offers. We've seen offers ranging from twenty-five thousand points to sixty thousand points for these cards, which is a wide and drastic difference. So the key is to find the best offers so that you can earn rapid rewards and earn the companion' pass very quickly. Because remember, it's good for two whole calendar years so you want to earn the pass as early in the year as possible. Now chase did just make it a little bit harder to get because you can no longer get two personal Southwest credit cards. However, you can still get one personal and one business credit card.
3. Understand the Southwest Reservations boarding policy. Southwest is a little bit unique in how they do their boarding. Basically, you have to check-in 24 hours prior to departure and you'll be issued a boarding group and a number within that group. Whatever group a number you get that's where you will line up for boarding and then you enter the plane and be able to choose any seat that you'd like. So you don't reserve a seat on Southwest which drives some people crazy but it does offer you some added flexibility. So the key is through check-in at that 24-hour window right when check-in opens and there actually is a service that you can use it's called Southwest early bird. Now this will cost about fifteen to twenty-five dollars depending on route, but what it does is it automatically checks you in 24 hours prior to departure and this is pretty much a guaranteed way to get a high A boarding pass or a low B boarding pass. Getting a pass like that will put you in a position to have a window or aisle seat and you should have plenty of overhead storage bin space.
4. You might not need Southwest Earlybird if you have access to the Internet 24 hours prior to your departure. You really don't need an early-bird to secure a good spot. If you pre-enter your contact information on the check-in page and wait for that clock to hit exactly 24 hours before you depart. You should be pretty much guaranteed around the same spot which should be good enough for a window seat or an aisle seat, depending on your preference.
5. Know how to save seats on Southwest? There is a hot debate on whether or not you should be allowed to save seats on Southwest. Many people are anti seat saving, I think that it's ok to save seeds within reason if you're just saving one or two seats. I don't see anything wrong with that but some people always have to take it to the extreme. so if you're gonna be saving seats the key is to go to the back of the plane and I mean the very back of the plane. Because back there people just really don't care what you do so if you're boarding up a plane with your softball team or your band or whatever it is and you're hoping to lock down a few rows in the front of the plane. You're practically begging for confrontation, but if you go to the back you secure a couple of rows.
6. Use business select to upgrade for extra legroom. Southwest operates primarily 737s and there are two versions, the 737-700 and the 737-800. The 800 is a bigger aircraft and it actually has more rows with extra legroom. If you know which aircraft are flying one, it could affect why you may choose to upgrade to business select and I'll talk about the business selected in a second but for upgrading purposes what it does is it gives you priority boarding. So you'll be issued a boarding pass for either A one through A 15. So let's say you're flying to a leisure destination like the Caribbean, chances are there's going to be very few people who purchase that business select fare. In that case, you could upgrade and possibly get A one boarding spot. With an A one boarding pass you can choose pretty much any seat on that flight and the good thing is pre-boarding cannot choose the emergency exit rows.
7. Southwest serves a lot of secondary airports so for example here in Houston the big Airport is George Bush Intercontinental. But then there's also Houston Hobby which is a much smaller airport and that is where Southwest flies. Now you want to know this because that means that you're going to be going without a lot of the amenities so for example, if you just we're looking into getting an airport lounge membership and you're flying a lot of Southwest. You may not be able to use that very often because some airports like a hobby don't really have any lounges at all. But on the flip side, these airports are smaller therefore they are easier to navigate through. So, if you're someone who just likes to get in and get out flying Southwest can actually be a better option.
8. Southwest allows you to fly with two free checked bags. They are one of the only airlines that allow you to do this and these bags are in addition to your free carry-on and personal item that you can take on the plane. This is a great way to save money and this is why when you're comparing Southwest fares to those ultra-low-cost carriers like spirit and frontier. You have to factor in your baggage because you could be spending a lot more money trying to pay for baggage fees but those airlines versus Southwest who's not going to charge you anything. If you do want to bring a third bag the prices start at $75.
9. Southwest will give you free snacks and free drinks, now these snacks are gonna be things like pretzels, peanuts, and crackers and for the drinks, they'll offer you complimentary sodas. But Southwest does not have any kind of like fancy meal tray that they will serve you. So if you are someone like me who is pretty much always hungry you maybe just want to go grab a sandwich or something in the airport and stuff in your bag or in your face and right before your flight.
10. Wanna get away fares offer extreme value. These are the cheapest fares with Southwest and they offer the least amount of flexibility, but these can be extremely cheap. Especially, if you can take advantage of one of those flash deals. These flash deals come around every so often and you can find fares as low as $39, which is crazy cheap. Keep in mind that those fares are going to come with a lot of restrictions, for example, you may only be able to fly on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. You may have to fly within specific time periods and also they're gonna be limited to certain routes.
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