What Are Your Southwest Points Worth Now?

Another day, another Southwest Airlines policy change. In the past month, the airline announced the addition of checked bag fees and basic economy fares while gutting the number of points passengers earn on their most popular tickets.

Now Southwest has introduced dynamic pricing for flights booked with Rapid Rewards points, the airline’s frequent flyer currency. Previously, the number of points required for an award ticket was directly tied to the ticket’s cash price, which allowed you to be more precise in the value to expect from your points.

But with dynamic pricing, the number of points required is independent of the cash price. That means your points may be worth more or less than they used to be, depending on your itinerary.

To understand the impact this change will have on consumers, we analyzed the cash and points prices of 88 Southwest flights booked at different periods throughout the year. While the results are mixed, Southwest points are worth about 7% less than they were a few weeks ago.

How much are your Southwest points worth?

According to our analysis, your Southwest Rapid Reward points are now worth 1.3 cents each. We determined that value using the median of the cents per point value for 88 round-trip Southwest flights. That’s a 7% decrease from the median value of 1.4 cents per point before dynamic pricing took effect.

Based on our analysis, Southwest Rapid Rewards points are worth:

• 1.4 cents per point when booking 15 days before departure, with a range of 1.3 to 1.5 cents per point.

• 1.3 cents per point when booking 60 days before departure, with a range of 1.1 to 1.4 cents per point.

• 1.2 cents per point when booking 90 days before departure, with a range of 1.1 to 1.5 cents per point.

• 1.2 cents per point when booking 180 days before departure, with a range of 1.1 to 1.9 cents per point.

The best ways to redeem Rapid Rewards now

Close-in bookings: Every award booking we analyzed 15 days before departure was at or above the median value of 1.3 cents per point. That appears to be the sweet spot for Southwest’s new dynamic pricing model. The apparent new minimum value for Rapid Rewards is 1.1 cents each, which was observed most frequently on farther-out bookings.

From a revenue perspective, this pricing strategy makes sense. The airline wants to maximize the number of people paying cash for a ticket by providing less value in advance for award bookings. As the departure date gets closer, the airline increases the value of your points in hopes of filling the plane.

Certain fare sales: There seem to be opportunities to get outsized value from your points that didn’t exist before, with point values of up to 1.9 cents each observed on select tickets booked 180 days in advance. However, valuations that high were rare, so you shouldn’t expect to get that value.

In the example below, Southwest was offering 1,000 points off the outbound ticket.

The same sale took $16 off the cash price, so the resulting valuation (($439.31 fare - $11.20 award taxes and fees) / 23,000 points) was 1.9 cents per point.

So what does dynamic pricing mean for Southwest flyers?

The shift to dynamic pricing is another departure from the consumer-friendly Southwest of old. While the median value of Rapid Rewards points has decreased, the devaluation isn’t as extreme as when dynamic pricing was introduced to award travel on other airline loyalty programs, including United Airlines MileagePlus or Delta Air Lines SkyMiles.

Methodology

We analyzed the cash and points prices of 88 round-trip Southwest flights across a range of domestic and international routes. The Wanna Get Away Plus fare class was used for all pricing data to be able to compare the valuations of similar Main Cabin-type fares that are bookable with points or miles on other airlines.

Departure dates were selected at 15, 60, 90 and 180 days from the day of the analysis. Return dates were chosen eight days after the departure date. This process allowed us to analyze a wide combination of days of the week and not bias the data towards expensive (i.e. weekend) or cheaper (i.e. midweek) flights.

Top photo courtesy of Southwest Airlines.