I often hear people say how much they love Southwest Airlines and how they have the best reward program. Personally, I think this is rubbish.
First off, let’s go with the elite program. For flying 30 times, one gets A-List status. What does this get you? It lets you have a guaranteed A boarding number, which means you get your first choice of seats. That’s pretty cool, right? Compare this with my choice of airlines: United. At the first elite level, Premier, one gets free Economy Plus, which is not just seats limited to those with priority, but they are seats with more legroom. More often than not, even if a flight is pretty booked, when I book a ticket, there are still good Economy Plus seats open, which includes bulkheads and exit rows (although exit row seats require Premier Executive or higher to reserve in advance). I honestly don’t understand why the first-come-first-served seating by Southwest is such a big deal. Pick your seat in advance and you’ll never be stuck with a bad seat.
The other legacy airlines don’t have a product like Economy Plus, but I still think their elite programs are better. At the lowest tier, which requires 30 segments or 25,000 miles to reach, you get free baggage, a 25% bonus on mileage earning, and the possibility to upgrade into first class. Even though you may not get upgraded very often, the upgrade chance on Southwest is 0% and you don’t get any bonus at all on earning rewards. The 25% bonus makes a pretty big difference. And once you hit that level, the advantage of free checked baggage that all Southwest passengers receive is negated.
But another big difference is the qualification requirement. At a legacy, you need 30 segments. If you have an itinerary with a connection, such as SFO-DEN-LGA, you earn 2 segments. With Southwest, they only count trips – that is they give you one credit for each origin and destination. You don’t get extra segments for connecting. And if you fly medium- to long-distance most of the time, 25,000 miles can be achieved in far fewer than 30 segments. If you fly SFO-ORD, which is about 1,850 miles, then that will take only 14 segments to qualify.
Similarly, earning is going to be better on the legacy airlines in most cases. As long as your average flight is longer than 1563 miles, you will earn a free ticket more quickly with the legacy airline than with Southwest. But also, as long as you have any activity in your account once every 18 months, your miles will never expire, whereas Southwest credits last only 24 months and an award, once you reach 16 credits, only last 12 months. Once you start factoring in the 25% mileage bonus for the lowest elite tier and 100% bonus for mid-tier and higher, Southwest’s program is terrible in comparison. Going back to the SFO-ORD example, with the 25% bonus, you need 11 flights to get a free domestic ticket, and with the 100% bonus, you’re looking at only needing seven flights. If you rack up more miles, you can also redeem your miles for international tickets or premium cabins, which you can’t do with Southwest. This is even better once you realize that you can redeem your miles on alliance partners – yes, that’s right, you aren’t restricted to destinations that are served by your airline.
I will give Southwest one thing – the ability to change tickets without penalty is extremely convenient. If you need lots of flexibility, then maybe Southwest is for you. Just don’t believe Southwest’s hype as a low-cost airline. Aside from short-haul flights (less than two hours), the cost of a ticket in most cases is going to be nearly the same for Southwest and the legacy airlines, and if anything, on transcons, I frequently see Southwest fares that are hundreds of dollars more than on the legacy airline.
Frankly, the only situation where I think that Southwest should be your preferred airline is if you need to be able to cancel/change tickets frequently, or if the vast majority of your flying is short-haul flights of less than 750 miles.
