Upcoming Chase Southwest And Airtran Card Changes?

Chase Southwest Airlines VisaDEAD!

-From this link you can access all 4 Southwest credit cards, the Consumer Plus, Consumer Premier and the Business Plus and Business Premier. The Apply Now button will take you to the Premier card and the alternate cards can be found on the bottom of the page.  Each of these cards offer 50,000 points for spending $2,000. Points can be converted to Airtran, used on Southwest, used for store Gift Cards, and all count towards the 110,000 points needed in a year to get a free companion pass.

Some DDF members have all 4 versions of the Southwest card, by getting 3 you’ll effectively double the travel value of the 150,000 points from $2,850 to $5,700 due to the free companion pass you’ll get. With Southwest starting to fly internationally and publicly stating that they intend to start service to the stunning island of Hawaii, this is a golden opportunity.

Chase Airtran Visa DEAD!

-Earn 32 Airtran credits and 2 business class upgrades for spending $3,000. Points can be used for 4 free one-ways on Airtran or Southwest, used for a free round-trip on any other airline in the US, or transferred to Southwest credits.

————————————————

For a limited time you can get 50,000 points when you spend $2,000 within 3 months of getting the Southwest card.  They’re marketing this as 2 free flights but in fact it is enough for about $950 of free flying on Southwest, so you can stretch out those points for as many as 15 free flights with Southwest’s low prices.

You can use the points for yourself or book award tickets for anyone else you want to give a ticket to. Plus Southwest allows you to cancel an award flight and redeposit the points in your account for future use without any penalties!

Don’t fly? You can also use 50,000 points to get $500 worth of gift cards to places like Amazon, Avis, Bed Bath & Beyond, Gap, Hyatt, Lowe’s, Macy’s, TJMaxx, Walmart  and many others.  A $500 gift card to Walmart can always be sold to a place like Cardpool for $460 cash.

————————————————————————————————————

With Southwest’s Rapid Rewards “2.0″ program you can redeem points for any seat on any flight.  For the regular “wanna get away” fare it costs 60 points for each dollar of airfare.  In practical terms this means for example:

A one-way LaGuardia-Chicago flight on 01/08 is $68.80 with tax.

It can also be bought for 3,480 points plus $2.50 tax.

So 3,480 points gets you a value of $66.30 ($68.80 airfare less the $2.50 tax required on the points ticket)

So each point is worth 1.9 cents (66.30/3,480), valid for redemption on all flights.

The value per point will depend on your route, but points always seem to be worth more than 1.8 cents each.

The Southwest card comes with a 50,000 point signup bonus, which at 1.9 cents per point is worth $950 towards Southwest flights just for opening the card and spending $2K.

There is a $99 annual fee but with this card you earn 6,000 points every anniversary that you have the card, which is worth $114 towards Southwest flights!

You get 1 point per dollar on regular purchases, which is equal to a rebate of 1.9%.

You get 2 points per dollar on Southwest purchases, including hotel and car rentals via Southwest, which is equal to a rebate of 3.8%

Companion pass:

Plus you get a free companion pass if you earn 110,000 points in a year from any source, including earnings from credit card bonuses and credit card spending! If you earn 110,000 Southwest points for example by 02/01/13 the pass will be good until 12/31/14. The pass allows you to bring a companion with you for free when you fly Southwest, even if you are flying on a free ticket!

Opening 2 Southwest cards (100,000 points) and spending the $2,000 on each (4,000 points) means you’ll be just $6,000 of spending short of the companion pass.

You should wait to finish spending the $2,000 on this card until January so that the points post in 2013 and the pass will be good all the way until the end of 2014!

Points transferred from Ultimate Rewards to Southwest don’t qualify towards companion pass status, but points transferred from Ultimate Rewards into Hyatt and then into Southwest do qualify! So you can transfer 50K Ultimate Rewards points into 50K Hyatt and 50K Hyatt transfers into 30K Southwest.

Page 1 of 3 | Next page