Are Southwest Points worthwhile, with a Chase Sapphire Reserve?

tmount

tmount

Administrator


A friend of mine MilesWhip pointed out to me a rather significant development with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. He pointed out that Southwest Points are no longer valuable if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve. While I don’t fly Southwest often, I do fly Southwest a few times a year.


Chase Sapphire Reserve, courtesy of ThePointsGuy.


Why do I say this? Because, if you go based on the argument that Southwest Points are worth roughly 1.5 cents per point, and you can book travel via the Ultimate Rewards Travel (over the phone), with the Chase Sapphire Reserved, you get 1.5 cents per dollar. In other words, you get the same value, however, going through Ultimate Rewards, you can still earn Southwest Points on your flight.

So lets break this down to the options once you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points:

  • You could transfer points to Southwest and then book awards at roughly 1.5 cents of value, and earn nothing for your travel.
  • You could use Ultimate Rewards Travel and book flights on Southwest for 1.5 cents per point, and earn Southwest Points for your travel.
  • You could transfer your ultimate rewards points to United and fly Lufthansa First Class. Ok… maybe not that.
And if you have a Southwest Companion Pass, fear not, booking through Ultimate Rewards Travel is no problem. Book your ticket, then call up Southwest and add in the companion pass. Simple as that.

Conclusion

With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, transferring Ultimate Rewards to Southwest doesn’t make sense. You can actually earn more by booking through Ultimate Rewards.

Continue reading...
 
shenvatele

shenvatele

Level 2 Member
Wow that's great information, thanks for sharing! I was planning on transferring nearly 100,000 UR points to SW for a couple of flights but will hold off on that for now. The only benefit I could see to transferring is that flights booked with SW points are fully refundable... at the least the points are.
 
M

madage

Level 2 Member
russ said:
But if your goal is to get the companion pass, then transferring to Southwest is a huge benefit.
Click to expand...
Doesn't work. Points transferred directly from UR to Southwest do not count for companion pass. You can transfer from UR to either Hyatt or Marriott (maybe both, don't remember) and then to Southwest and those points will count for CP, but it won't be 1:1.
 
J

JerLon

New Member
So, the real question is "Are Southwest Points a worthy transfer from Ultimate Rewards if you have a CSR?" The math seems to say no, although the refund rules for award redemptions may still throw it to a yes.
 
nicnac

nicnac

Level 2 Member
Given the right situation, southwest points are the most valuable airline currency out there. The fact that they can be used on any flight, and are fully cancellable/refundable is amazing.
I'm quite surprised that the "bloggers" are concerned with cents/pt and not the usability of the points.

Here's a situation that I have used for the past 4 years:
I love to ski, but I live in PHX. Options locally are limited, and CO is 8-10hrs by car.
So each year I book every weekend fri night-sun night from the middle of Jan to the middle of Mar, thats 8 weekends. With the flexibility of the points, all I have to do is check the snow forecast the wednesday before the trip, and decide go/nogo. The plan is to actually ski 4 of the 8, or so. And to ski feet of powder... guaranteed!

This year, due to constantly checking the price, I've managed to get the price of each round trip down to 10,700 points (plus a companion).
That's 8 round trips, 16 flights, doubled due to the companion pass, 16 round trips, 32 flights.

Those 16 round trips cost me 85,600 points. What other airline's domestic charts allow that kind of redemption and flexibility? None come close.
Sure, I could pay cash (or CSR portal) for my 8 round trips but at 1.65c/pt I would be out $1,400. And if I cancelled half (on purpose) I would have $800 in vouchers to use somehow.

This is the true value of southwest's rewards program.
 
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