Register to earn a two month companion certificate, where a friend flies free whenever you do (whether paying cash or points for your own ticket) on Southwest Airlines.

Register and book by August 28 for travel by November 15, and one roundtrip or two one-ways earns the Companion Pass that wll be valid January 6 through March 6, 2026 (historically a slow time for airlines).

• Already-booked tickets don’t count. You can cancel and rebook to make them count.

• The trick this time is that basic economy fares don’t count, so you have to spend more to earn it. And you have to book direct with Southwest.

• You’ll be able to change your designated companion up to three times during the Companion Pass validity period. (Note though that this is the same as your annual limit, so if you earn a year-long Companion Pass later you’re using this year’s changes for that, too.)

This works great for me – Southwest offers 41% of the seats out of my home airport, but I haven’t been flying them very much. For an upcoming trip with my family inside of the promotion period they have the best available non-stop schedule by far. So I had an itinerary sitting in an open browser tab for the last six hours or so, meaning to get to it today.

Now I’ve registered myself and my wife – which will allow us to list each of our kids as companions for the two month period. (My son will still be an eligible lap infant, but why not grab the extra seat for $5.60?)

Southwest used to say that running promotions didn’t mean business was down, because they did not sell their tickets through online travel agency sites and had to do marketing to attract customers to their website. But they do now distribute fares through third parties. Make of that what you will.

They’ve made similar offers several times in the recent past – like this one and also a year ago at the start of September. Last spring they used it to goose Hawaii flights which were underperforming.