Rewards: 2x points on Southwest Airlines purchases or Rapid Rewards hotel and car rental partners; 1x points on all other purchases. Four upgraded boardings annually–when available. 7,500 points each year on the cardholder’s anniversary. $75 annual Southwest Airlines travel credit.
Current Welcome Offer: 60,000 points after $2,000 in net purchases in the first three months
Annual Fee: $149
The Southwest Airlines Priority Card is the airline’s premier–and newest–credit card. The card has two older siblings (Premier and Plus) that were refreshed with the release of the Priority card.
The Priority card offers all the benefits as its siblings, but with some valuable increases and extras. For example, each of the three Southwest cards offers an annual anniversary bonus. Priority has the largest at 7,500 points (the equivalent of what you’d get from spending $625 – $1,250 depending on fare class). This card is the only of the three to offer the upgraded boarding options (you are able to make requests to get into the A group, depending on availability, without paying the $15 fee). The annual travel credit essentially reduces the annual fee from $149 to $74 – making it less expensive than the Plus card.
As with all Southwest Airlines credit cards, you can spend your way to earn the unique Companion Pass status. To earn Southwest Airlines’s Companion Pass status, a Rapid Rewards Member needs to earn either 110,000 points or fly at least 100 segments in a calendar year. Points earned either from either everyday spending or bonuses are eligible towards earnings Companion Pass status each year. This unique elite status can be earned entirely without actually flying a single flight on Southwest Airlines but only from spending.
At $149 annually for the credit card, the 7,500 anniversary points are a nice bargain, as mentioned before. For the common Wanna Get Away (6x points per dollar) fares, 7,500 points would cost over $1,200. For the most elite fare class, Business Select (12x points per dollar), those points would cost over $600. A cardholder gets those points for effectively $74; because, the cardholder also gets a $75 annual Southwest Airlines travel credit applied to their first qualifying travel purchase, too. Therefore, these points cost effectively less than $0.01 each!
When selecting the best credit card for this category, I wrestled with either selecting this Southwest credit card or the JetBlue Plus Card. Mathematically, these cards get exceptionally close when looking at the ROI of the annual fee to the anniversary points (JetBlue offers 5,000 points for $99). The JetBlue Plus Card even offers a $100 statement credit annually for any JetBlue Vacations purchase – essentially making the annual fee $0. However, therein lies the conflict.
The Vacations purchase is in addition to the actual air travel – a choice and not a given fact. The Southwest Priority Plus Card statement credit is given when you fly Southwest Airlines – no other purchase necessary.