Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards has a new promotion offering four ways to accelerate progress towards elite status.

Log into your Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account. Under ‘my account’ you’ll see promotions. And you can register for the offer.

Normally, Southwest Airlines status requires:

• A-List: 25 flights or 35,000 qualifying points
  
• A-List Preferred: 50 flights or 70,000 qualifying points

The biggest benefit of status, to me, is an earlier ‘boarding number’ that lets you ensure your choice of seats. There are other priority benefits, of course, and free wifi and more points for the higher ‘A-List Preferred’ tier, but I view boarding before those paying for ‘early bird check-in’ as the real sweet spot. Of course this will change completely when Southwest moves to assigned seats. Of course we could see elites gain access to new, premium seats.

The airline was just out aggressively selling status. Now they have four ways to earn it faster through November 30.

1. Double tier points on flights and triple credit if booking through a business channel (“GDS, SWABIZ®, or one of our direct connect/API partners”).

2. Award travel counts as a qualifying flight each segment is a tier qualifying flight if booked after registration and flown by November 30. You may want to re-book some existing awards.

3. Credit card spend plays a bigger role in status by earning 2,000 tier points for every $5,000 in spend on a Southwest co-brand card on top of normal qualifying points earned via spend using these products. (And they already doubled the rate that credit is earned via card spend for this year.)

4. Earn with partner activity. Every base point earned through qualifying partners counts as a tier point towards status, up to 5,000 qualifying points.

   This includes Southwest Hotels, Car Rentals, Rapid Rewards Shopping, Rapid Rewards Dining, Laithwaites, 1-800-Flowers, NRG including Reliant and Xoom, Energy Plus, Harry and David, and Rewards for Opinions.

This is not targeted. Travel booked through Southwest Vacations Packages is not eligible for this promotion. Bonus elite qualifying points from flights will post within 72 hours of trave. Bonuses earned via credit card will post “within 4 weeks after the end of each month and by 12/30/2024 for November purchases.”

Hat tip to Corbitt Burns: