Southwest Rapid Rewards Adds Cash + Points, But It’s A Bad Deal

Southwest Rapid Rewards has just introduced a new option for redeeming points, but don’t get too excited.

Southwest’s new Cash + Points redemption option

Southwest Rapid Rewards is a straightforward, revenue based frequent flyer program. You typically need a certain number of points toward each dollar of airfare, and it doesn’t matter which flight or fare you’re redeeming toward. For example, currently you need around 86 Rapid Rewards points per dollar of airfare.

The catch is that under Southwest’s up until this point, you’ve needed to have enough points for the entire redemption, so you couldn’t redeem a small number of points plus cash toward a ticket. That’s finally changing, as Southwest is introducing Cash + Points, whereby you can redeem a combination of cash and points toward a flight (as the name suggests!).

This has launched as of April 22, 2024, though for the first 10 days, only a subset of members will have access to this. After that, all Rapid Rewards members should see this option in their account. Here’s how it works:

• Just go through the process of making a cash booking for a Southwest ticket while logged into your Rapid Rewards account
• When you get to the booking page, you should see the option to use the Cash + Points feature
• You’ll be given five different combinations of cash and points that you can redeem toward a ticket; in some cases redemption options will start at just 1,000 points

Below is a picture of what the booking process looks like when using Cash + Points.

Below is a video about the new concept.

Why Southwest Cash + Points probably isn’t worth it

The concept of Cash + Points is great, since it allows you to redeem your points toward the cost of a flight, even if you don’t have enough to redeem for the entire thing. This is useful for those who only fly Southwest occasionally, since it means the Rapid Rewards points that you accrue can score you a discount.

There are two major catches with Southwest’s new Cash + Points concept:

• You don’t get a whole lot of value per point; when you outright redeem for a Rapid Rewards award flight, each point gets you around 1.1 cents (or so) toward the cost of a Southwest ticket, while with the examples given, you’re generally getting around 0.6 cents of value per point, which is almost a 50% reduction in value
• Cash + Points bookings don’t earn Rapid Rewards points, and don’t earn qualifying points toward A-List, A-List Preferred, or Companion Pass, even for the portion of ticket paid for with cash; so you’re being rewarded a lot less for these tickets

Keep in mind that Southwest Rapid Rewards points don’t expire, so I’d recommend continuing to accrue points and then redeeming when you have enough for an award ticket, so that you can get the most value for your points.

Bottom line

Southwest is introducing Cash + Points, whereby you can redeem points to partially pay for the cost of a ticket. The catch is that you don’t get nearly as much value per point as you would when redeeming outright. On top of that, you don’t even earn Rapid Rewards points for the portion of the ticket paid with cash. While I suppose more options are a good thing, this is something I’d recommend shying away from.

What do you make of Southwest’s new Cash + Points concept?