Rapid Rewards 2.0 Begins March 2011

I have already posted my thoughts on Southwest’s frequent flyer program, Rapid Rewards, and after talking about it for years, Southwest has finally decided to roll out Rapid Rewards 2.0. It is now a completely revenue-based system with points awarded based on dollars spent and on the fare class (Wanna-Get-Away vs. Anytime vs. Business Select). For most people, the system is significantly worse. Rapid Rewards was only really good for the short-haul flyers anyway, but now that is bad too.

The best part about Southwest is the lack of change fees, but other than that, why fly Southwest? They just went from horrible-for-most to plain horrible.

Flickr Photos and Short Update

It has been awhile since I last posted – partly because I have been busy and partly because there has not been much to report.  I was denied for the British Airways Chase Card, which was not entirely unexpected due to my heavy churning during the last six months. The offer has been coming and going, so maybe in a few months, if I see it again, I will give it another shot. In the meantime, I have uploaded additional pictures to Flickr for my trips through November. Pictures for my December mega-trip will be posted soon.

I have an upcoming trip to Germany in March that I have been planning for, and I have not picked up ICE tickets for 74.50 Euro, which will take me from Frankfurt to Nuremberg to Munich to Frankfurt. Unfortunately, I did not book an open jaw flight to Frankfurt/Munich, which makes the return to Frankfurt necessary. I booked an unusual routing on United which had an early morning departure from Frankfurt, but schedule changes have since made United rebook me on a more direct routing, losing me about 1500 miles. I will mourn those miles.

I’ll also be flying on Southwest for (hopefully) the last time to position myself for the international itinerary. With status on United, I have a hard time justifying flying on Southwest, and I’m getting sick of their open seating policy. It’s far too stressful when I can just book row 6 on an A320, 3B on a CRJ-700, or exit row on any other plane.

Retroactive Credit on Southwest Airlines

A few weeks ago, Southwest Airlines had a huge two-day sale with one-way fares at $30/$60/$90 depending on distance traveled. This was particularly great for fares that fell in the $30 block, such as SJC-LAS, as fares never get that cheap for flights anywhere.  Las Vegas is my destination of choice for a relatively cheap, short vacation whenever Southwest has sales, so I booked a couple of roundtrip itineraries SJC-LAS-SJC (I’ll make another post later as to why one should never buy roundtrip itineraries on WN). A few days later, my friend convinced me to join him in Vegas on a Ding! fare in late August.

As this brought my total up to six segments flown on Southwest in three months, I figured it would be a good time to sign up for Rapid Rewards as I had a pretty good chance of flying 16 segments in 24 months. I had also flown WN a few times over the last year and a half, and I was a little bummed that I hadn’t joined Rapid Rewards before then as it would have put me close to a reward ticket. I decided to try to credit an old itinerary to my RR account, and to my surprise, I was able to get credit for a SJC-LAS-SJC trip in January. So I diligently went through my old e-mails and dug up all of my WN itineraries and entered them into the system. The result was that I gained 10 RR credits plus the two credit bonus for joining. Out of those 10 segments, I only paid for four, as four segments were paid for by the mathematics departments of various schools during my graduate school visits, and the other two were from when I swapped a United Airlines DBCFREE voucher to send someone to Boston for Thanksgiving in exchange for her buying me the cheapest tickets home for Christmas.

All in all, I’ll end up with a WN Standard Award ticket for four trips to Las Vegas costing me less than $450 total.