Use Southwest Rapid Reward Points for International Travel

If you jumped on the 50,000 Southwest Airlines Credit Card offer that ended earlier this month, you may have read that you can use your Southwest Points for international travel.

Disclosure: If you value Southwest Points more at than 1 cent, you should probably stop reading right now – you will not like what you see below.

Log into your Southwest account and click Rapid Rewards.

Click the How to Redeem tab and click Redeem for More Rewards.

Then click the Explore Rewards button and wait for the next page to load.

Now click International Flights.

Now search for your international flight.  You must enter international destinations, no domestic flights.

 

My first search was for JFK to DUB.  The cheapest points option was on Delta for 53,620 Southwest Points.

ITA Matrix priced the flight at $536.20, meaning I would be getting exactly 1 cent per mile for each Southwest Point.

 

My second search was for LAX to YVR.  The cheapest option was on Air Canada for 14,957 Southwest Points.

ITA Matrix priced the flight at $149.58, again, getting 1 cent per Southwest mile.

As you can see, this is not a great deal if you value Southwest Points more than 1 cent each.  You can always get more than 1.67 cents per point on all Southwest flights.  I have never used this for booking international flights and doubt I will in the future.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.