Flying for free sounds like a dream. There are whole websites that are dedicated to the art of hacking loyalty points to fly for free or to get free upgrades. Some people have a natural ability to hack points to their best advantage. I am not that person. Airline points are like calculus to me. It generally goes right over my head. So how, then, did an airline points dummy like me manage to fly Southwest for free nearly two years? Not only did I fly for free, but Ryan flew for free anytime he traveled with me. Let me introduce you to a lovely thing called the Southwest Companion Pass. This pass was the most straight forward airline point hacking that I was actually able to understand so I jumped right at the chance to snatch it up.
What is the Southwest Companion Pass?
What criteria do I need to meet to qualify for a Southwest Companion Pass?
How I Qualified for the Southwest Companion Pass
In in January the following year I used the phone number listed on Hartley Brody’s Adventure Blog to call to see if Chase was running the same promotion on the Plus card since the same promo did not show up anywhere online. Sure enough they were running the promo at the time that I called. It felt a little sketchy at first, using a random 800 number I found off a blog post on the internet, then giving the person on the phone all my information including Social Security number. A recipe for identity theft no doubt, but it was legit. I qualified for the Plus card with the same 50,000 rapid rewards promotion and received my credit card within a week. That phone number has since been deactivated. It seems that Chase is now trying to get people to sign up online exclusively.
NOTE: The Premier Card has an annual fee of $99 and the Plus card has an annual fee $69 of $89. It’s well worth the annual fee as we basically paid for it and more after our first flight taking advantage of our Companion Pass to Albany. The Premier Card also waives all foreign transaction fees so that alone usually pays for the annual fee for that card.