Southwest Airlines is joining competitors Delta and United Airlines in changing its frequent flier program. Travelers are probably not going to love it.
“The cost of [Southwest's Rapid Rewards frequent flier] program has risen, and we needed to increase the number of points required to manage that cost,” says Rapid Rewards director Jonathan Clarkson.
He attributes the change to “more demand for free flights and fewer open seats for redemptions (because of the growth in load factor from paying customers).”
Despite the airline’s reputation for keeping things clear, beginning April 17, 2015 it will get more complicated to redeem Rapid Rewards points for flights.
Coming in for a landing: a more complicated system for redeeming Rapid Rewards points on Southwest Airlines. (Photo credit: AP)
It’s all been so simple until now. Southwest currently calculates the number of points needed for a free ticket using a multiplier of the base airfare (before taxes and fees): 70 times the fare for the cheapest “Wanna Get Away” tickets, to 100 and 120 times respectively for “Anytime” and “Business Select” tickets.
The new change will uncouple this calculation from fares. “The number of Rapid Rewards Points needed to redeem for certain flights will vary based on destination, time, day of travel, demand, fare class, and other factors,” the airline’s website says.
Real world examples won’t be available until the new system kicks in on April 17, so we’ll all have to wait to see what exactly it means.
Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1FJRXdL
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