My Family of 5 Flies for the Price of 3—Here’s How

My family spends a chunk of time each year in the air. From our home in Denver, my wife, three kids and I often travel to visit family in Florida, California, Georgia and New York. We also enjoy escaping to warmer climates such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii during our cold winters. And when I travel for work as a professional credit card reviewer and consultant, I often bring a kid or two along. Given our appetite for travel, airline tickets could easily cost us thousands of dollars a year.

Thankfully, we only have to book three tickets for our family of five, because my wife and I each have the best perk in the airline world: the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass. Southwest’s beloved companion pass is basically a buy-one, get-one-free coupon that lets you designate another person to get a complimentary ticket every time you fly (you can change your designated companion three times a year). 

Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card

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• Base rewards rate: 1x
• Bonus rewards: 3x on Southwest purchases, 2x on Rapid Rewards hotel and car rental partners, local transit and commuting, internet, cable and phone services and select streaming services
• Welcome bonus: 75,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months
• Key perks: $75 annual Southwest credit; annual 7,500-point bonus; 4 upgraded boardings each year
• Annual fee: $149
• APR: 21.49% to 28.49% variable

It gives you unlimited 2-for-1 tickets, anywhere Southwest flies, which includes much of the continental U.S., as well as Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean. You just pay the TSA fees of $5.60 per flight (plus any foreign government taxes). My path to companion pass bliss came through Southwest credit cards, such as the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card, but frequent flights can also get you there.

I first got hooked on this perk 15 years ago, around when I started writing about credit cards and shortly after Southwest started flying to Denver. At that time, it allowed me to travel with my wife and infant daughter for the cost of a single ticket. (Children under two can travel free domestically as “lap infants” on most airlines.) You can imagine our pride in introducing our first child to her great-grandmother in Florida. As our family grew, my wife also began earning a Companion Pass, allowing the whole family to travel at a steep discount.

Other airlines offer so-called companion benefits, typically as a credit card perk. For example, Alaska Airlines offers a one-time companion fare to Alaska Airlines Visa Credit cardholders and The Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card comes with an annual companion flight certificate. But there is nothing else like the Southwest offer. 

You can score the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass in two ways. The hard option is to take 100 flights in the calendar year. I prefer to do it by earning 135,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points, which you get by a combination of flying Southwest, using Southwest credit cards and purchasing hotels, rental cars and vacation packages sold on the Southwest website. Southwest also has frequent promotions that make earning the pass easier.

I fly Southwest for business every month or two (most recently to San Antonio) and put about $10,000 a year of spending on my Southwest cards.

While not everyone is a small-business owner who travels as much as I do, it’s possible to earn the pass with a more moderate amount of travel if you sign up for a Southwest credit card and use it for your daily spending. Importantly, the bonus points earned from opening a new account count toward a Companion Pass, so I sign up for a new Southwest West personal or business credit card—there are four—every few years.

For example, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card offers 75,000 bonus points when you spend just $3,000 in the first three months. If you spend $3,000 a month, like a typical Wall Street Journal reader does, you would earn about another 40,000 points in a year, as some purchases earn double points. 

At 9 to 15 points per dollar on Southwest ticket purchases (members of the Rapid Rewards frequent flier program receive 6 to 12 points per dollar on tickets regardless of how they pay and you get an addition 3 points with the credit card), you’d need to fly Southwest eight to 10 times a year, at about $400 per flight, to earn the remaining 20,000 points needed. If you book hotels or rental cars through Southwest, or spend more money on the credit card, then you could earn it without as much travel.  

I estimate each pass saves us about $2,000 on airfare each year. But it’s hard to put a price on the special moments and memories during all of the family visits and vacations that we’ve taken—trips that may not have been affordable if it wasn’t for this incredible perk.

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