Executive Summary -
Behind every airline affinity card lies a sign up bonus promotion and this card is no different. The official marketing line for the promotion of this card is 2 free flights. But what exactly does that mean? We'll investigate here.
This is how the bonus promotion works at the moment. After you get the card, you have to spend $2,000 within the first two months. When you have accomplished that, you will get 50,000 bonus Rapid Reward points. The key question is what will 50,000 points get you. Depending on your flight and the cost, you can actually get 2 roundtrip wanna get away fares. That assumes that the wanna get away fares cost $208 (which requires 24960 points). For wanna get away fares, 60 points gets you $1 in ticket value. Obviously, your mileage will vary based on where you travel and how much that ticket will cost you. But rather than looking at it from the point of getting 2 free flights, I'd rather look at it that you get 50,000 points.
Aside from this, you can also get more bonus points as a new card member if you do a balance transfer. This is how it works. You will earn one point for every dollar of balance that you transfer to the card within 90 days. You can earn up to 15,000 bonus points, which means that you can earn bonus points for up to $15,000 in balance transfers. While this is another way to get points, the problem with this is that many folks who get airline credit cards simply do not carry balances but rather pay in full (PIF). My suggestion for folks is to try to take advantage of this (since this can add up to quite a lot of points). Alternatively, you can stagger your balance transfers within the 90 days.
If you manage to take full advantage of the balance transfer sign up bonus, we are talking about getting a total of 65,000 SouthWest Rapid Rewards bonus points in your account. And that is surely worth quite a bit if you fly with SouthWest.
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