Purchase Southwest Points with a 25% Bonus

Starting today, there is a promotion where if you purchase Southwest points you’ll get a 25% bonus. While a bonus always sounds great, Southwest has a fixed redemption program, so you’ll still not get the value that they are worth, typically. But let’s go through the math to see when it might be worth it to purchase the points with this bonus.

Without the promotion, the cost to purchase points is a flat $0.0275 per point. Points can be purchased in 500 increments (starting at 1,000 points), so every 500 points will cost you $13.75. With the 25% promotion you’ll end up with 625 points for the same cost, giving you a purchase rate of $0.022 per point. You can purchase up to 60,000 points (for a 15,000 point bonus) through July 16, 2013.

As mentioned above, Southwest has a fixed redemption where each point is worth $0.0167. So to buy points for more than they are worth is definitely NOT a good value. However, if you are close to redeeming for a flight and shy a few points, do the math to see if purchasing points will ultimately be worth it to redeem for a free flight. For example: Let’s say you have 5,000 points and the number of points you have required to redeem for a free flight is 8,000 points. This means you’ll need to purchase 3,000 points for that free flight. You can purchase 3,125 points (2,500 + 625 bonus) for $68.75. In this particular scenario you are overpaying for the flight by $15.90 ($0.022 per point to purchase the points – $0.0167 per point to redeem = $0.0053 x 3,000 points = $15.90). You might instead find that paying for the fare will earn you the points needed for your next flight to be free. It really depends on if you fly Southwest often or just trying to deplete your account and prefer to pay less for a “free” flight.

Now, there is one scenario where it actually might benefit you to purchase points and actually get a flight for cheaper than the advertised flight. As I mentioned about a year ago, Southwest and AirTran allow you to transfer points and credits back and forth freely, allowing you to redeem for a free flight regardless of price.

When you purchase points, these points can be transferred to AirTran credits or back to Southwest credits – giving you the opportunity to redeem for a “free” flight on either airline.

Transferring Southwest points to AirTran credits: 1,200 Rapid Reward points = 1 A+ Reward credit (*you need 8 A+ Reward credits for a free one way ticket, 16 A+ Reward credits for a round trip). So you need to accrue 9,600 Southwest points to earn a free one-way flight on AirTran. With this promotion, you can purchase 10,000 points (8,000 + 2,000 bonus) for $220. So if an AirTran flight you are looking to purchase is more than $220 than it is worth it to purchase the points to redeem. However, keep in mind that AirTran free tickets are capacity controlled so you will need to call them in advance to see if the flight you are looking at is available for free ticket awards. Many times, from personal experience, AirTran representatives will override availability for you as long as it is not a black out date. They will also put the ticket on a 24 hour hold for you.

Transferring AirTran to Southwest: Credits: 1 A+ Reward credit = 1 Rapid Reward credit. So once you transfer your Southwest points to AirTran, you can then transfer them back to Southwest. Similar to AirTran, it requires 8 Southwest Rapid Reward credits to redeem for a free flight. It will cost you the same $220 to “purchase” a one-way flight, so see if the flight you are looking at is more than this and it could be worth it to take advantage of this promotion. If you do not have a free ticket in your account, you will only be able to check availability by calling Southwest directly.  If you already have credits in your Southwest account, you do not need to transfer them to AirTran and then back to Southwest, you can instead convert them right in your Southwest account for the same conversion rate of 1,200 points = 1 credit.

Ultimately, this probably is not a good promotion for most of you, however, there are a select few that will see the benefit. Also remember that you will not earn points (for Southwest) or credits (for AirTran) when redeeming free flights, so take that into consideration. With Southwest, the points earned from a paid flight can be thought of as 10% back to use on a future flight.

Purchase Southwest points here and it will require you to sign into your Southwest account. Also, if you are new to the Southwest program there are a bunch of different sign up bonuses so make sure to check out this prior post to learn how to maximize your point earnings!