Southwest is adding... airline partners??

Good morning and happy hump day. 🐪

Congratulations - you’ve reached the peak of the workweek. It’s all downhill from here, but in a good way… like sledding… god I miss snow…

Anyway, let’s talk travel:

• ✈️ Major updates from Southwest Airlines

• 🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• 🌎 Positioning flights, revisited

✈️ Major updates from Southwest Airlines

It’s no secret - I love Southwest Airlines… and I know y’all do, too.

But there’s no denying that certain aspects (like their quirky boarding process) are not ideal, and it was no surprise when they announced that this would be changing.

Last week, they dropped a big announcement with exciting news and specifics about things like fares, seat selection, and timelines for rolling out the big changes.

So, I thought today we could cover what Southwest has in store for us.

For starters, they plan to implement new seat selection, extra-legroom seats, and an overall cabin refresh in late 2025…

In other words, you don’t really need to worry about this for the super near future.

But here’s what the changes will look like when they DO take effect:

• The lowest fares (Wanna Get Away) will not include any seat selection

• Wanna Get Away Plus will include free seat selection with the option of paying for a better seat

• A-List members will get extra-legroom seats for free within 48 hours of departure

• A-List Preferred members will get extra-legroom seats for free at the time of booking

So… yeah. Southwest is basically starting to look like the other airlines.

I personally like this idea though. Many Southwest flyers would happily pay extra to avoid the cattle call-esque boarding process and actually know where they’ll sit.

Now, those people have the chance to do exactly that.

When these changes begin to roll out, I suspect there will also be some new seating perks for holders of their co-branded credit cards (which will apply to many of you).

To make things even more exciting, however, Southwest is also retrofitting all of its planes (which will likely take years) with new, verrrrrryyyyy tasty seats. 🤤

They look sleek and comfy, and having a new interior will certainly make Southwest more appealing than flying Delta’s 400-year old dinosaur Boeing 767s. 🦖

But there’s one more major announcement from Southwest, which I think is very interesting…

They’ve announced that they will be adding airline partners, beginning with IcelandAir.

It’s unclear exactly how this will work, but here are some potential outcomes (purely speculation from me):

• Booking IcelandAir with Southwest points (wouldn’t that be nice?)

• Codeshare agreements (flying to Europe on both Southwest and IcelandAir on a single ticket, for example)

• Benefits on IcelandAir for Southwest elites (and vice versa)

• Maybe more exciting airline partners in the future

It’s just another example of how Southwest has seen the success of other airlines who have extensive partnerships and want to get in on the action.

Here’s the bottom line:

Southwest will be making some BIG changes in the coming months and years, and most of them seem to be pretty awesome.

We already love Southwest, and it looks like it will continue to be an airline worth investing in and flying with as they go through their next phase.

🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

✈️ Speaking of new partnerships… Wells Fargo has just added Virgin Atlantic as their newest transfer partner, which is definitely making their cards more appealing. Hopefully they keep it up so we have another super valuable transferrable points currency.

🤦‍♂️ Seriously? JetBlue will no longer serve hot meals on any of their transatlantic routes in economy, according to their recently published new menus… Meanwhile, most carriers around the world serve free hot meals in economy even on short, 1-hour domestic flights.

💳 This bank has a current targeted offer to earn 10,000 or 20,000 UR Points for spending various amounts of money. Check here to see if you’re targeted - it’s a great opportunity!

🌎 Positioning flights, revisited

One of my favorite travel strategies when it comes to maximizing my miles and points is this little thing called positioning flights.

Sound familiar?

We’ve chatted about this before—and, in fact, Brendan puts this strategy to use in our most recent YouTube video!

As a quick refresher, positioning flights are usually quick and/or cheap flights that set you up for a longer journey with the ultimate goal of saving money and/or points in the process.

For example, instead of burning through 70k points for an economy flight to get to Edinburgh from his current airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, Brendan booked a quick positioning flight down to Orlando instead.

This allowed him to score an award flight on Virgin Atlantic over to Edinburgh for just 10,000 points 🤯

Also toss in that special Virgin Atlantic Companion Award Ticket redemption to get his wife there, too, and the cent per point valuation continues to go WAY up.

And as freaking cool as positioning flights are… I feel like I have to be the “responsible” parent here and also mention some of the caveats 👇

1. Your positioning flight should be cheap

If you have to shell out a ton of cash or points for your positioning flight alone, then that sorta puts a damper on the money and points-saving vibe of this tactic… 🫠

Unless that second flight is just really, really worth it. Like really worth it.

2. Two flights likely means two separate itineraries

Most of the time, your positioning flight will be on a completely separate itinerary than your “main” flight.

This comes with its own risks, as you might imagine.

For instance, if your positioning flight is delayed or canceled, you could miss your second flight and be left with no safety net, and no recourse from either airline 😬

Rebooking or amending that itinerary is all on you—and that could be a stash of points or money that you don’t have (or don’t want to use).

Sometimes, if you do book both flights with the same airline (or even the same alliance), you might be able to have them merged into one itinerary to avoid the above situation.

…but don’t count on this always working.

Another way to build in some sense of safety with this is to give yourself ample time between flights. My personal rule of thumb is to ideally have around 24 hours between flights that are on different itineraries.

But, of course, that usually means spending extra time in a different city and also footing the bill for an additional hotel night.

3. Positioning flights require extra time

To piggyback on my last point, you ultimately need to be okay with the additional time needed to factor in a positioning flight in the first place.

If you only have seven days for your vacation, are you okay with using a day or two for extra travel days just to make a positioning flight work?

Okay, listen.

Positioning flights are a GREAT tactic. But as with everything in life, there are pros and cons 🙃

However, if you do your research and try to mitigate the risks, your next positioning flight could undoubtedly be an excellent travel win.

That’s all for today, folks!

I hope you enjoyed some points and miles talk and major travel news. It’s always nice to see popular airlines try to raise the bar and innovate, so I look forward to seeing how Southwest evolves.

Anyway, tune in tomorrow where I’ll cover some of the most exciting airline sweet spots, and tell you how to easily book them.

Cheers,

22.3193° N, 114.1694° E