Southwest Airlines will stop counting credit card sign-up bonuses toward the Companion Pass on January 1, 2027, and the unlimited pass will take 140,000 qualifying points or 100 flights. Today the same pass takes 135,000 Companion Pass qualifying points or 100 flights, and welcome bonuses count toward that total.
The airline’s 2027 Companion Pass rules page says Companion Pass benefits will be earned through Tier Qualifying Points, known as TQPs, beginning January 1, 2027. The current Companion Pass qualifying points are retired after December 31, 2026.
What stops counting and what still earns points
Southwest lists the exclusions. New cardmember welcome bonuses, referral bonuses, anniversary points, bonus points from spend promotions such as 2x on gas, and partner spend such as hotel and car bookings will no longer count toward the pass. They still earn Rapid Rewards points, but those points no longer move a traveler toward the pass.
What does count on a Rapid Rewards credit card is plain spending: 1 TQP for each $1 spent on purchases. Balance transfers, cash advances, cash-like transactions, gambling, person-to-person transfers, interest, fees and unauthorized charges are left out, and TQPs post after the billing cycle closes.
The people affected are Southwest cardholders who treat the pass as the reason for the card, and anyone who planned to open a card for its bonus to reach the pass in 2027. A grace period for cards approved by December 2, reported below, softens the change for some new applicants. Anyone who earns a Companion Pass in 2026 under the current rules keeps unlimited trips through December 31, 2027, according to Southwest.
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The new thresholds, in dollars
Under the 2027 rules, a Companion Pass with three Companion trips takes 95,000 TQPs or 75 qualifying one-way flights. The unlimited pass, which comes with Platinum status, takes 140,000 TQPs or 100 qualifying one-way flights. The three-trip tier did not exist under the current rules.
Because a card earns 1 TQP per dollar, card spending alone would take $95,000 of purchases for the three-trip pass and $140,000 for the unlimited one. Those are simple arithmetic from Southwest’s earn rate, and they ignore flights, which also count. A traveler flying 100 one-way segments reaches the unlimited pass without any card spending.
NerdWallet reports the pass is part of a wider overhaul in which A-List becomes Silver, A-List Preferred becomes Gold and a new top tier, Platinum, carries the unlimited pass. Nandika Suri, Southwest’s vice president of Rapid Rewards, said the airline wants engagement to be the driver of how members make it to a tier. The Points Guy adds that a 10,000-TQP boost arrives once a member earns 130,000 TQPs in 2027.
One thing does not change. A passenger can have one Companion at a time and can change the Companion up to three times per calendar year, as before.
How much a sign-up bonus was worth toward the pass
Chase’s Southwest card page lists the current welcome offers. The Rapid Rewards Plus pays 50,000 points after $1,000 of spending in the first three months, with a $99 annual fee. The Priority pays 60,000 points after $2,000 and carries a $229 fee, and the Premier pays 55,000 points after $1,500 with a $149 fee. The Performance Business card pays 80,000 points after $5,000 and charges $299, while the Premier Business pays 60,000 points after $3,000 and charges $149.
Against today’s 135,000-point threshold, a 50,000-point bonus covers about 37% of the way, a 60,000-point bonus about 44% and the 80,000-point business bonus about 59%. From 2027, none of that counts. The same $1,000 of spending that earns a bonus would add 1,000 TQPs.
Cards approved by December 2 are treated differently
There is a grace period for new applicants. Doctor of Credit reports Southwest is telling cardmembers who are approved for a Rapid Rewards credit card on or before December 2, 2026, and who meet the welcome bonus requirements, that those bonus points can count as Companion Pass qualifying points, even if the spending threshold is met in early 2027.
The Points Guy reports the same December 2 cutoff and says anyone who earns a pass under the 2026 rules keeps its benefits through the end of 2027. The Doctor of Credit report says activity that stops counting toward the pass also stops earning TQPs, though it still earns Rapid Rewards points. It describes personal card bonuses of 50,000 to 60,000 points and a business bonus of 80,000. For anyone approved after December 2, the sign-up bonus no longer helps with the pass at all.
Does the card still pay for itself?
For a household that held a Southwest card only for the pass, the fee is now the figure to weigh. At $99 to $299 a year across the five cards Chase lists, the annual fee has to be covered by points, perks or companion flights saved.
The earn rate makes the math concrete. A cardholder who charges $12,000 a year earns 12,000 TQPs, about 13% of the 95,000 needed for the three-trip pass and under 9% of the 140,000 for the unlimited one. Flights are the faster route, since 75 qualifying one-way flights reach the three-trip pass and 100 reach the unlimited one.
That leaves a plain question for each cardholder: how many one-way Southwest flights the household takes in a year, and how much it charges. The airline’s rules page is where the thresholds are stated, and the 2027 totals start counting on January 1.
Does a Southwest card still earn its annual fee in 2027?
A card kept for a pass that now takes $95,000 in spending or 75 flights is a yearly cost of $99 to $299 for many households, and the same attention given to a card’s fee is rarely given to the benefit programs that cut everyday bills.
The Benefits Checklist is the related job a rewards story points to: trimming household costs. It covers 11 benefit programs, including Medicare Savings Programs, Extra Help for prescriptions and heating help, with the 2026 income limits for each.
More Financial Reading
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- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- The New $6,000 Senior Deduction and 14 More Tax Moves for Retirees
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
