Booking awards flight for someone else on Southwest

Nearly a year ago I flew with my grandparents on their first flight ever to my little brother’s wedding. This was a win, win, win for me.

1. As a flying nerd, it was cool to fly with my grandparents on their first flight ever.
2. They just wanted me to buy the tickets on the same flight I booked for my wife and I, and they would pay me back. That to say, I got to put the airline spend on my rewards card.
3. They actually hated flying and will never fly again but I did take the liberty of signing them up for frequent flyer accounts. With any other airline on earth one flight wouldn’t be worth anything but Southwest has a cost-based program with incredibly cheap flights from time to time. That to say, I used my grandparents’ miles for myself. Plus I did take some time to log into their account and take a survey or play a game or two when promos arose for more free miles.

Here is a post on how to get a Southwest companion pass and here is a post on how to score some good deals with Southwest. The combo left my grandparent’s with 3,838 Southwest points each and a one-way to Little Rock cost me 3,540 points. Since I have a companion pass, I only used up my grandfather’s account for my wife and I to get to Little Rock and my grandmother’s 3,838 points got my mother a flight.

So to sum it up:

1) You can easily book flights for someone else using your points.

1. The Southwest Companion Pass is amazing and even applies to flights booked with other people’s accounts, just be sure to enter your frequent flyer number. (However it requires two Chase cards and is only really worth it if you do a lot of domestic travel).
2. I hate to say many more kind statements about Southwest as I really don’t enjoy flying with them, but their website is awesome. Seriously, moving dates and canceling award flights is even easier than a hotel website (like Marriott). Just search and click. And it’s true – no change fees and all that jazz.
3. There wouldn’t have been enough points in the account if the time wasn’t taken (like 45 seconds) to take stupid surveys and to play goofy games when the opportunity came up. I would take the survey on one account, log out and do it all again on the other account. Repeat.
4. Again, finding cheap Southwest flights is as easy as signing up for the sales emails or downloading ding.