Southwest's promotional Companion Pass needs one qualifying round trip booked by Thursday, August 6, 2026, and gives you a companion for taxes only from January 5 to March 3, 2027. Register before booking or it does not count, and check your own account first: the offer is targeted, not public.
The short version: Southwest is offering a promotional Companion Pass — book one round trip (or two one-ways) and someone else flies with you for taxes only, from January 5 to March 3, 2027. You have to register before you book, and you have to do both by Thursday, August 6, 2026. The part nobody says out loud: this offer is account-specific. It is not on Southwest's public promotions page, so check your own account before you plan around it. Checked August 3, 2026.
A Companion Pass lets you name one person who flies with you for free, and "free" here means you still pay taxes and fees, which Southwest states start at $5.60 each way. The real version of this benefit takes 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year to earn. The promotional version takes one round trip.
| Step | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Register, then book a qualifying round trip or two qualifying one-way flights | Thursday, August 6, 2026 |
| Finish flying those qualifying flights | November 18, 2026 |
| Your companion flies with you | January 5 to March 3, 2027 |
That last window is 57 days long. Hold on to that number, because it decides whether any of this is worth doing.
Register first. Southwest's own help pages say some promotions "require that you register before taking any other action related to the promotion," and booking travel is the example they give. A flight you book before you register does not count, and there is no way to apply it afterwards.
Southwest also says the qualifying flights have to be flown by the same person who registered, and that your Rapid Rewards number has to be on the booking. If you book through a third party and your number is not attached, you have bought a flight and not a Companion Pass.
This is the part we want to be straight about. This promotion does not appear on Southwest's public promotions page. Southwest's help centre says some promotions "are offered exclusively in specific markets or to targeted Members and can only be redeemed/accessed by the Member who received the offer," and that if you are eligible "you should see the promotion and registration details in your account."
So the honest instruction is not "go register." It is: sign in, look for it, and only then plan around it. If it is not in your account, no amount of booking will earn it, and a trip bought on the strength of an offer you were never given is just a trip you paid full price for.
One more limit from the same page: you may be held to "one promotion or one of a certain type of promotion (e.g., an offer to earn promotional Companion Pass) at a time." If you already have one running, this may not stack.
Southwest is consistent about this in its own fine print: the companion flies "free of airline charges," and that "does not include taxes and fees from $5.60 one-way." So a round trip for your companion costs about $11.20 in taxes, before anything else. That is still a very good deal against a paid fare. It is not zero, and a headline that says zero is wrong.
Work it backwards from the 57-day window. The pass is only useful if you were going to fly Southwest with another person between January 5 and March 3, 2027. If you were, the value is roughly every companion fare you would have bought in those two months, minus $11.20 a round trip. Two trips at a $200 companion fare is about $377.60 kept.
If you were not already going to fly in that window, the honest answer is that this is worth close to nothing, and the qualifying round trip you would buy to unlock it costs real money today. A benefit that requires you to spend to reach it is only a benefit if the spending was already happening.
The standard Companion Pass takes 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year, or 100 qualifying one-way flights. Earn it and you hold it for the rest of that year plus the entire next one, your companion flies with you an unlimited number of times, and Southwest lets you change who that person is up to three times a year.
Set that next to 57 days and one designated person and you can see what the promotional version is: a sample, not the benefit. It is a good sample if you were flying anyway.
Southwest's own Companion Pass page says an eligible Rapid Rewards credit card gives a boost of 10,000 qualifying points each calendar year, deposited by January 31 or within about 30 days of opening the account. Against a 135,000-point target that boost is 7.4% of the way there. It helps; it does not get you there.
These are the cards we track, by annual fee:
| Card | Annual fee |
|---|---|
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business | $299 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority | $229 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier | $149 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business | $149 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus | $99 |
We are deliberately not telling you to open one for this promotion. The promotional pass needs one round trip, not a card, and an annual fee paid for a 57-day companion window is a bad trade unless you were opening the card anyway.
Offer details confirmed against Southwest's own pages on August 3, 2026. Promotion terms are account-specific and can change without notice, so read the terms shown in your account. Not financial advice.