Barclays Arrival + WN Early Bird CheckIn

[smittytabb]

The conventional wisdom on Southwest flights has been to book two one ways so that if you need to change your ticket it is less complicated. The problem is that if you decide to book Early Bird CheckIn each charge is $12.50. If you book a round trip ticket, the total for those fees is $25, so it is eligible for a travel award with your Barclays Arrival +. In order to be certain that the website does not charge you per leg, i.e. $12.50 charges, I called Southwest yesterday to pay for the Early Bird fees. It showed up on my pending transactions as a $25 charge for each round trip, so can be easily used for travel awards regardless of what happens with that flight in the future.

 

[Josh F]

Interesting strategy... I personally prefer to save the $ and just snipe my seats right at the T-24 mark. I'm usually able to score late A/early B boarding with that strategy and save $...

 

[madage]

Interesting strategy... I personally prefer to save the $ and just snipe my seats right at the T-24 mark. I'm usually able to score late A/early B boarding with that strategy and save $...

This strategy has worked well for me, too.

 

[BuddyFunJet]

I used to snipe for myself (now A-List) but would EB for my wife so a bad number wasn't my fault.

Even t-24 can draw a bad number

 

[Josh F]

I used to snipe for myself (now A-List) but would EB for my wife so a bad number wasn't my fault.

Even t-24 can draw a bad number

One big variable here would be whether you're originating at an "endpoint" or a "hub." The T-24 is based off of your first flight, so if you're based out of MDW, your T-24 is well after all the connecting flight people who already checked in at their T-24 (hours ago). Flying out of ROC/BUF, the only thing we're competing against, are the other people who buy EB, I usually wind up with high A's or low B's. If I'm connecting, I do usually even better on the 2nd flight, since our T-24 came first. If I lived in a MDW/BWI/etc. I'm sure my number would be much worse.

 

[BuddyFunJet]

One big variable here would be whether you're originating at an "endpoint" or a "hub." The T-24 is based off of your first flight, so if you're based out of MDW, your T-24 is well after all the connecting flight people who already checked in at their T-24 (hours ago). Flying out of ROC/BUF, the only thing we're competing against, are the other people who buy EB, I usually wind up with high A's or low B's. If I'm connecting, I do usually even better on the 2nd flight, since our T-24 came first. If I lived in a MDW/BWI/etc. I'm sure my number would be much worse.

Yep. I'm at DAL so EB is my best fighting chance. Since I have a CP and my wife flys free, her draws are sometimes bad with EB since I think that the price paid for the flight plays a factor of your position among the EB buyers.

 

[smittytabb]

One big variable here would be whether you're originating at an "endpoint" or a "hub." The T-24 is based off of your first flight, so if you're based out of MDW, your T-24 is well after all the connecting flight people who already checked in at their T-24 (hours ago). Flying out of ROC/BUF, the only thing we're competing against, are the other people who buy EB, I usually wind up with high A's or low B's. If I'm connecting, I do usually even better on the 2nd flight, since our T-24 came first. If I lived in a MDW/BWI/etc. I'm sure my number would be much worse.

Yep, I fly out of MDW and if you use T-24 you can actually get B group even if right on it. I just get early bird, charge it to Barclays Arrival and deduct it as travel reimbursement. That way I don't have to worry about it.

 

[James from BNA]

Great idea on using Barclay for Early Bird. I'm going to have to tweak my A-List requalification cost/benefit analysis. Thank you OP.

My boarding strategy is A-List for me and T-24 usually B out of BNA for my wife. If we have the kids, we family board after A. I need one more Barclays/Southwest mileage run in 4Q to retain status. Save work travel, it's hard to justify spending $2k+ for A-List when CP and RR pts are so easy to come by.

To my knowledge, the Barclay card is unique in allowing redemptions for Southwest. Here are my other fixed value redemption currencies that are collecting dust because of this:

Travelocity Amex Card
US Bank FlexPerks Travel
Citi TYP

I use these 3 for one way and last minute Delta, United, Frontier, and American trips that aren't good redemptions on Avios or WN.