Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well. I received this email from Chase last week about the benefits on my Chase Southwest Airlines Priority Credit Card. The $75 Southwest Airlines travel credit and 7,500 anniversary Southwest Airlines Points make it easy to justify paying the $149 annual fee (those 2 perks basically cover the cost of the annual fee), but don’t forget about the 4 free Upgraded Boardings which you can use to move up to A1 – A15. Not only will those 4 Upgraded Boardings be reimbursed by your card, you will also earn 3x Southwest Airlines Points on the purchases and you can even stack a Southwest Airlines Chase Offer, if the stars align. Let me show you what I mean.
I had a few recent Southwest Airlines flights and wanted to use my 4 free Upgraded Boardings before my $149 annual fee posted. There was also a Southwest Airlines Chase Offer for 10% cash back on Southwest Airlines purchases, minimum $50 purchase, up to a $40 cash back maximum. When I paid the $70 Upgraded Boarding fee on my first flight, the $70 Upgraded Boarding statement credit posted right away and the $7 Southwest Airlines Chase Offer statement posted a few days later. This Chase Offer can only be used once, so my second, third, and fourth Upgraded Boarding fees didn’t trigger the Chase Offer. Since I had a $7 credit balance, I did a $7 Amazon gift card balance reload, to bring my account balance to $0.
On the Transaction Details page, you can see that each $70 Upgraded Boarding fee earned 3x Southwest Airlines Points, for a total of 210 points x 4 transactions = 840 points.
As a reminder, the price for Upgraded Boarding can vary based on route, time of day, and day of year, so you may see the price higher or lower than $70. Also, since there are at most 15 Upgraded Boarding slots from A1 – A15, less so if other passengers purchased Business Select tickets, you will want to purchase the Upgraded Boarding sooner rather than later since they do sell out occasionally.
If you have any questions about using your 4 free Upgraded Boardings, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Anyway to easily find out if the 4 free upgrades have been used?
Hi Patrick, I would go to the Chase app or website, go to your SWA Priority card, look at all the transactions from the last 12 months and see how many times the upgraded boarding credit posted since your most recent annual fee.
You can also call or send a secure message to Chase asking how many upgraded boardings have been used.
Another nice addition to make this easier – Southwest now allows you to buy upgraded boarding for everyone in your party at once. In the past I found I had to purchase the upgrades one-by-one for our family which was quite annoying.
Hi Andrew, that is a good tip, I didn’t realize that you could purchase them all together.