Southwest Rapid Rewards 20% Off Award Sale

Southwest Airlines has just launched a lucrative award sale, allowing you to redeem fewer Rapid Rewards points for travel. This is a pretty awesome offer, though the catch is that unlike previous such offers, you need to register, and you only receive the points as a rebate after the fact.

Southwest offering 20% off award tickets

Southwest Airlines is offering a 20% discount when you book your flights with Rapid Rewards points:

• This is valid for bookings made through Monday, July 15, 2024
• This is valid for travel through Wednesday, November 20, 2024
• This is valid for travel to anywhere Southwest flies, including domestically and internationally
• Registration is required, and must take place before you book and travel
• The discount isn’t offered at the time of booking, but rather the 20% rebate will post to an eligible Rapid Rewards account within four weeks of completing a flight
• The Rapid Rewards rebate will only be earned by the person whose name appears in the Rapid Rewards account and who actually travels, regardless of who purchased or paid for the ticket

Rapid Rewards is a revenue based program, and you generally get the same value for your points, regardless of how you redeem. So being able to redeem 20% fewer points for the same award is a great value, making this the ideal time to redeem.

Even if you’re not sure you’ll be able to travel, keep in mind that Southwest has no change or cancelation fees, so you can always book a ticket now, and then cancel it later, and have your Rapid Rewards points redeposited. Similarly, if you already have a ticket booked for travel over an eligible period, it could be worth checking to see if you can rebook it now and save some points.

These kinds of promotions are pretty telling

Generally speaking, airlines run award sales when they don’t think flights will be full. That’s especially true for a program like Rapid Rewards, where every seat can be booked with points, so there aren’t even capacity controls.

Ordinarily, you’d think that the airline wouldn’t be looking to discount awards over the peak summer travel season, since historically that’s a time where airlines have had no issues filling all seats. I have to imagine that this reflects the post-coronavirus trend we’ve seen, whereby airlines aren’t doing as well domestically in summer as they used to.

There’s massive demand for long haul international travel in summer, while airlines that are primarily domestic have struggled. It sounds like Southwest’s bookings for summer and early fall aren’t looking too great, or else we wouldn’t see a sale like this.

This also isn’t the first such promotion we’ve seen, as the program has offered several in recent months. Back in the day, we’d usually only see award sales for travel in shoulder season, like between the New Year and Easter.

Bottom line

Southwest Airlines has launched a lucrative award sale, whereby you can save 20% on the cost of a Rapid Rewards award ticket for travel this summer and fall. You need to book in the coming days, but there’s a really long travel window, so there are lots of opportunities to take advantage of this. Given the flexibility that Rapid Rewards points provide, it can always be worth making a speculative booking.

Just keep in mind that in this case you need to register, and the rebate will post after the fact.

Will you be using this Southwest 20% off award sale?