Southwest has launched a new cash & points booking option for customers. You’ll be given five options when choosing cash & points starting with as little as 1,000 points, unfortunately when you redeem points in this way you only get 0.625¢ – 1¢ per point. These bookings also don’t earn points or qualify for elite status. In every case I’ve looked at it’s actually cheaper to just purchase points than use the cash & points feature.
Still hard for me to complain about SWA, having “earned” over 450,000 “free” points over the years from various credit card offering and other promotions.
They should start a program where they reward themselves points if a flight departs on time. It just may be the incentive they need to get ‘er done.
So sorry for your experience with them…in the 25 years we have flown with them, we only had one delay and that was weather related
I think we all knew this would be the case when they first mentioned it. There was no way they were going to offer something like this without it devaluing the points redemption so heavily.
The ONLY way I could see this make sense is for somebody who rarely flies SW and is sitting on a handful of RR points that isn’t enough for a flight. The points would otherwise not be used so they at least get something for them.
This is a great deal for Southwest customers that are bad at math.
Southwest been coming out with way too many (useless) promos and “features” lately.
the (Useless) is sending me
“Useless” LOL!
Love the verdict in the title.
Southwest points are reliably worth ~1.3 cents each.
The value is even better on cheaper, shorter flights (LAX to OAK, HNL to OGG).
I see no reason to use these cash+points redemptions, better to save up for a full flight
Brilliant marketing department