Southwest 60,000 Points Signup Bonus on All Four Versions (Ending 1/9/19)

Update 1/1/19: Looks like these offers will also end on 1/9/19 (same date the Chase Hyatt bonus is being reduced). Keep in mind the 50,000 points after $2,000 in spend will be a better offer for a lot of people.

The Offer

Chase has increased the signup bonus offer on all three versions of the Southwest personal card to 60,000 points with a tiered bonus. The business version remains with its 60,000 non-tiered bonus, as before.

  • Southwest Plus personal card with $69 annual fee – 40,000 points bonus after $1,000 in spend within 3 months. Plus, earn 20,000 points after you spend $12,000 on purchases within your first year.
  • Southwest Premier personal card with $99 annual fee – 40,000 points bonus after $1,000 in spend within 3 months. Plus, earn 20,000 points after you spend $12,000 on purchases within your first year.
  • Southwest Priority personal card with $149 annual fee – 40,000 points bonus after $1,000 in spend within 3 months. Plus, earn 20,000 points after you spend $12,000 on purchases within your first year.
  • Southwest Premier business card with $99 annual fee – 60,000 points bonus after $3,000 in spend within 3 months.

Card Details

  • Chase 5/24 rule does apply to this card
  • Annual fees are not waived the first year
  • The Premier personal and business cards earn a 6,000 points anniversary bonus; the Plus earns 3,000 points anniversary bonus; the Priority earns 7,500 anniversary bonus

Our Verdict

The 50k or 60k offers come and go. For a while now, there’s only been 40k available on the three personal Southwest cards. We’ve seen in the past 50k or 60k offers which were not tiered, e.g. spend $2k and get 50k or 60k points. This offer is not as good since it requires $12k in spend to get the extra 20k points. Still could be useful for earning the Southwest Companion Pass.

Earning 110,000 Southwest points earns you the Companion Pass. The best way to time your 110,000 miles is to earn the 110,000 threshold at the beginning of the calendar year since Companion Pass continues for the next entire calendar year. For example, if you earn 110,000 Southwest miles during January 2019, you’ll have the Companion Pass for the rest of 2019 and the entire 2020.

The easiest strategy to earn the Companion Pass has always been to get two Southwest credit card signup bonuses. In our case, you’ll want to apply now, and take care to ensure NOT to meet the spend requirement until after January 1st. The signup bonus points on the two cards will post after you complete the spend in early 2019, and you’ll have a Companion Pass for nearly two years. Get one of the personal cards and the business card, meet the high spend requirement, and you’ll have 120,000 points just from the bonuses and earns you the Pass.

Best option is to meet both signup bonuses in January by putting $3k on the business card and $1k on the personal card. You’ll have 104,000 miles. Then spend another $6k on the personal card which brings you to the 110k for the Pass. Then spend an additional $5k over the course of the year to meet the 20k bonus.

Again, many of us are not eligible for any of the Southwest cards at all due to the 5/24 rule, or because you’re a current Southwest cardholder of any version or because you got a bonus within the past 24 months.

There’s also a 50k bonus offer with $2k spend available if you apply in-flight on Southwest, that’s a better deal for a lot of people since you’ll avoid the high spend requirement, but only works if you have a flight to apply on.

Hat tip to poolking25 on r/churning

RELATED: Year-End Credit Card Checklist for 2018: Travel Credits, Spend Reset, Application Strategy & More
    Chuck
  • On January 1, 2019, 18:38

View Comments (77)

  • Any tips on cancelling this car after receiving the annual bonus before paying the annual fee? Or is this inadvisable?

  • Arrggg. I know I should have screen-shotted my offers but I didn't. Two questions: How can I find out which offer i applied for (and recieved.) 2) I used your link in Dec. for the Southwest business card. I thought it was a 40K then 20K after a 12K spend. Is it possible it was a 60K reward at a 3k spend?

  • Was at 4/24 today and applied for business version and was approved. Then applied for $149 AF personal card right after and it went to Decision Pending. There was a previous DP that suggested that 2 cards could be applied for and gotten at 4/24 so I went for it. I go back to 4/24 on 2/1, so I could always ask them to reconsider on 2/1, but I don't know how that would affect the spend/bonus offer that is set to expire on 1/9/19.

    • Well, no official word from Chase yet on the decision pending, but upon login to my Chase account today I see a new Chase personal SW Air Visa with a whopping $2k credit line and my only other personal chase cc, my Amazon card, with $2k less in credit line. Interesting. They approved me for a massive amount on the business side, but are apparently skitish on the personal side. Odd. However, if this approval holds, this does validate the idea that if you're at 4/24 you may get approved for 2 Chase cards by applying on the same day. Of course, 1 was a business card.... Hmmmm....

  • recd an invite for a personal cc ($69 af) for 40k pts & $100 stmt credit; is it a better offer to apply than this personal cc on here? Thx

    • Follow the personal card offer link and scroll to the bottom and you'll see a valid link for the business card. But, they are probably missing out on the referral (if any) here.

  • DP: Wanted SW Companion Pass -

    Applied 12/26 for SW Business Card 60,000 points $3k spend. Approved.

    Applied next day for SW Personal Card with 50K points with $2k spend link on Reddit- Status line said 2 week notice. Waited 3 days then status line said 7-10 day. Called Recon phone line. Transferred to Verification dept. Approved.

    SO, you can apply for both Business and Personal within 1 day AND if you get 7-10 day notice it actually means they want to Verify. Verify is done by Chase texting a 6 digit code to your cell phone while you are on the phone

    Confirmed offers of 60,000 points on Business and 50,000 on Personal.

  • I applied for chase southwest premier personal card on 12/16/1016 and was approved
    I closed this card in Jan 2018 when annual fee was due.

    I applied today for southwest plus card via the 50K LINK and was denied saying I got the bonus within 24 months

    How is that possible? Can someone explain?

    Is 24 months counted from when account was opened (mine was 12/16/2016 which is more than 24 months now) or chase counts 24 months from when the bonus 50K Southwest points were credited/deposited to my account, which was sometime in March 2017, and in that case, guess it has not been 24 months yet??????

    Thanks for you guidance

  • Back in November, I applied for the SW Business Premier card inflight. I just wrapped up spend for the 60,000 point offer. I wasn't immediately approved so I didn't apply for the the personal SW card. I later did that. I did 95% of the spend in 2018. Just finished up the spend on both today. Then, I realized, I only had 100,000 points posting this month. I thought the personal was 50,000. I came back to this post to see if there were any other ways beside the shopping portal to earn points that would apply toward the companion pass. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the 10,000 points referral bonus counts toward the CP. I have a trip at the end of the month, and I'm really hoping to have my new CP. Can anyone confirm that the referral points counted towards the companion pass?

    • They will count but you will not receive them till the end of your billing statement. In fact you won't even know they're coming until you look on that statement and see that they were awarded. so if you just ended the billing cycle and they weren't there, you're going to be waiting until the next cycle ends before receiving anything.

    • They did count for my cp but it took about 5 weeks for it all to post. I hope yours comes a bit quicker! As a side note I did book a trip hoping the companion pass would go through. The night before the trip it finally posted. I called SW and they helped me change the fare over to the companion pass.

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