Southwest travel credits no longer expiring!

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Although Southwest has one of the most customer friendly policies when it comes to changing and canceling a flight, you’ll typically end up with a travel credit if you paid for your flight. And despite these generous policies — especially if a flight goes down in price — the travel credits can be challenging to use due to their expiration date policy. Until today.

Starting today, all unexpired and new travel credits received will no longer have an expiration date. This is a huge benefit to Southwest fliers, especially since this new policy even extends to already received travel credits.

Southwest Airlines today announced a first-of-its-kind policy and value among major U.S. airlines, eliminating expiration dates on all Southwest flight credits unexpired on, or created on or after July 28, 2022. This additional flexibility applies to all currently valid, existing flight credits

Automatically, the Southwest travel credit expiration date will change to Dec. 31, 2040 for all flight credits. This is a temporary date until they are able to update their technology later this year.

Using a Southwest travel credit

Of course, if you purchased a Wanna Get Away fare, flight credits are non-transferable. So even though the credit will no longer expire, it still can’t be transferred to another passenger. But, if you purchase the slightly more expensive Wanna Get Away Plus fare, any flight credits received due to a cancelation or re-pricing the flight can be transferred to another passenger.

Although Southwest has been my favorite airline for a long time, due to the Southwest Companion Pass, this is a huge improvement. Of course, if you use points, points never expire and just simply go back into your account, but if you typically pay for your flights, you no longer need to scramble to use the pass.

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