Southwest Rapid Rewards 25% Off Award Sale For Summer Travel

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, especially since it’s valid over peak summer travel dates.

Southwest offering 25% off award tickets

Southwest Airlines is offering a 25% discount when you book your flights with Rapid Rewards points:

• This is valid for bookings made through Monday, April 15, 2024
• This is valid for travel through Monday, September 30, 2024
• Blackout dates include May 23, May 24, May 27, July 7, July 14, July 21, and July 28, 2024
• This is valid for travel within the continental United States, so Hawaii and international flights don’t qualify
• This is valid for one-way or roundtrip travel with Wanna Get Away or Wanna Get Away Plus fares
• Use promotion code SAVE25NOW at the time of booking (it should be pre-populated at this link)

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 25% fewer points for the same award is a great value, making this the ideal time to redeem.

For example, take a $199 ticket from Baltimore to Los Angeles:

• This ticket would ordinarily cost 15,819 Rapid Rewards points plus $5.60 in taxes, getting you a value of ~1.22 cents per point
• With this promotion the ticket would cost 11,865 Rapid Rewards points plus $5.60 in taxes, getting you a value of ~1.63 cents per point

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 at a lower cost.

This promotion is 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 aren’t looking too great, or else we wouldn’t see a sale like this. In the past, we’ve usually seen award sales this for travel in shoulder season, like between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, or between the New Year and Easter.

Bottom line

Southwest Airlines has just launched a lucrative award sale, whereby you can save 25% on the cost of a Rapid Rewards award ticket for travel this summer. 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.

Will you be using this Southwest 25% off award sale?