✈️ How to buy Southwest status

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 49 seconds

Good morning and happy Monday from Chengdu, the heart of China’s Sichuan Province (and the PANDA capital of the world 🐼).

Before I go sit at the zoo and stare at pandas all day, here’s some travel stuff for you:

• ✈️ You can buy Southwest status

• 💧 Sponsored by LMNT

• 💳 Alaska Airlines announces a new premium card

✈️ You can buy Southwest status

Before we get into the weeds here, I just want to be upfront and tell you that this opportunity is not available to everyone… including me. 😭

But if you’re even an occasional Southwest flyer, this could be a game-changer for you as you look forward to 2025.

As the headline suggests, there is a way to essentially buy Southwest status by way of buying Tier Qualifying Points.

Here is the fine print you need to know before we discuss the potential value:

• You need to have earned at least 3,000 TQPs this year to be eligible to purchase any

• You can only buy a maximum of 35,000 TQPs

Since this is capped at 35,000 TQPs, the best status you can buy if you’re starting from zero is A-List, which does come with some pretty solid benefits:

The other thing to know is that this is quite expensive… for example, if you have 10,000 TQPs in your account and want to buy the remaining 25,000 to get to A-List status, it would run you a cool $1,499, which is… a lot.

Buuuuuuuuuut…

If you’re just a few thousand TQPs away from status and don’t have any more flying planned this year, you could spend a few hundred bucks to get over the finish line and unlock a full year of A-List status, which might be worth it for Southwest fans.

Of course, if you don’t have the required 3,000 TQPs already, you’ll be ineligible like I am…

So here’s the bottom line:

There are only a couple of weeks left in the year, and this is a great way to bridge the gap toward Southwest status.

If you’re interested, check out this page, see if you’re eligible, and jump on the deal before it ends on December 30th.

💳 Alaska Airlines announces a new premium card

I don’t need to tell you about how Alaska has been on the up and up this year…

They revamped their entire loyalty program, became a transfer partner of multiple programs, merged with Hawaiian Airlines, and now…

They’ve just announced that they’ll be dropping a premium credit card. 😎

And while we don’t know ALL of the details, we do know quite a lot… So today, I’ll tell you what we know, what we don’t know, why I’m excited about it, and a special bonus.

What we know

Here’s what we know as of now (because Alaska has officially announced this):

• The card will have a $395 annual fee

• The card will offer a Global Companion Certificate

  • This will be valid for mileage awards, international flights, and even partner award bookings

• The card will offer another certificate after meeting a spending requirement

• It will offer some way to get closer to elite status

• It will come with lounge passes, in-flight wifi vouchers, and waived award booking fees (but not waived surcharges, taxes, etc.)

• The card will earn 3x on international spend and dining, and have no foreign transaction fees

Wow. That seems like a lot for a $395 annual fee, eh?

I love this!! The earning rates are high, and having a way to get closer to Oneworld elite status is very appealing to me personally.

Don’t forget that Alaska’s new program allows you to earn elite status even from flying on award bookings (read more about that in this newsletter), so having another way to reach status (and unlock other milestone rewards) easily is amazing.

The companion certificates alone seem to make the annual fee worthwhile, though we don’t know the mileage cap on these certificates.

And that brings us to…

What we don’t know

The main mystery so far is that we don’t actually know when this card will launch… the landing page says “Summer 2025,” but I can see that getting pushed out further.

As I mentioned, we also don’t know exactly how powerful these companion certificates are. If the distance or mileage cap is low, it could negate a lot of the value.

But even if you could use the companion pass for some of Alaska’s lower-priced international awards, it would still be super valuable.

Anyway, here’s what else we don’t know:

• What the welcome offer will be

• Exactly how the card will accelerate toward elite status

• Possible insurance and travel protections

But here’s one other big thing we DO know…

If you join the waitlist right now, you’ll get 500 Alaska miles in your account.

If you join the waitlist AND eventually sign up for the card when it launches, you’ll get another 5,000 Alaska miles (in addition to whatever the welcome offer is).

So here’s the bottom line:

I can pretty confidently say I’ll sign up for this card. I fly a lot of Oneworld airlines, Alaska has amazing award rates, and I can earn a lot of miles on international spend.

If you’re into Alaska (or OneWorld in general) and want to participate in their excellent new program, I’d join the waitlist and pay attention to any updates in the new year.

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…or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. 😉

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you had a great weekend and I look forward to sharing some more exciting travel updates with you tomorrow.

Take care,

30.5723° N, 104.0665° E