The Companion Pass, explained

The Companion Pass is the single best deal in Southwest's Rapid Rewards program: once you earn it, one designated companion flies with you for the cost of taxes and fees — usually a few dollars — on every flight you book, for the rest of the calendar year you earn it plus all of the following year.

The threshold

You need 135,000 Companion Pass qualifying points (or 100 qualifying one-way flights) within a single calendar year. Every qualifying point counts the same toward that number, whether it came from flying, everyday card spend, or a signup bonus.

Why timing matters

Qualifying points reset every January 1. Earn the Companion Pass in, say, March, and it's valid through the end of next year — nearly two years of a free-riding companion from a single push. Earn it in November instead, and you get the same amount of runway most people would get from a March push minus most of a year. The single biggest mistake is not planning around the calendar — chasing the threshold late in the year gets you the pass for a few months instead of nearly two years.

The dual-card play

Each open Southwest personal or business card adds 10,000 qualifying points per year on top of its signup bonus. Opening two cards in the same push — one personal, one business — stacks two signup bonuses and two 10,000-point boosts, which is usually enough on its own to put the 135,000 threshold within reach before any everyday spend counts. That's the play most people chasing the pass in a single year actually run.

See which cards fit that plan and what the current bonuses look like.