The Southwest Companion Pass is one of the better travel deals out there, but you’ll need to act very fast if you want to take advantage of this deal.

The Deal

If you venture over to the Southwest website, you’ll see a limited-time promotion where you can earn a promotional Companion Pass by just taking one roundtrip or two one-way flights. However, note the extremely limited window with which you can book your flights.

If you want to take advantage of the deal, you’ll need to follow these simple steps:

• Log in and register at the link above. After registering, book a single round trip or two one-way flights by February 5, 2026.
• Travel by March 31, 2026.
• You will receive a promotional Companion Pass valid between August 10, 2026 and October 7, 2026.

There are two important “gotchas” with this deal:

• Flights must be purchased after you register. If you have travel already booked, you might want to consider canceling and rebooking if the price hasn’t gone up too much.
• Changing your flight after February 5, 2026 will invalidate this promotional offer.

This is the first time Southwest is offering the promotion this year. Believe it or not, Southwest offered a similar promotion three times last year. Clearly, Southwest believes the promotion will help them overcome much of the negative changes they imposed last year.

Additionally, one important term was removed. In the 2025 versions of this promotion, you couldn’t book Basic class and have it count. However, that restriction is lifted for this one. That’s awesome! Per the terms:

Redemption reservations and Cash + Points bookings qualify for this promotional offer. Basic, Choice, Choice Preferred, and Choice Extra fares are all qualifying flights for this promotion. … Companion Pass, charter flights, group travel, and Getaways by Southwest^™ bookings do not qualify as one-way or round trip flights for this promotion.

What is a Companion Pass?

The Southwest Companion Pass is a way where you can bring a buddy with you for just the cost of the taxes (generally $5.60 one-way within the United States). What’s nice is that there isn’t any limited availability to worry about when booking. If there is a revenue ticket for sale on the flight, you can add your companion. The pass works with both points and cash bookings across the whole route network (even international destinations like The Bahamas).

Normally the full Companion Pass requires 135,000 of tier qualifying points, which is hefty.

We last had the Companion Pass in 2017. Back then, Alex was a one-year-old, which allowed all of us (me, Jenn, and Alex) to fly for the price of one ticket. That’s because infants don’t have to pay anything when flying as a lap infant when flying in the United States. The Companion Pass unlocked a lot of travel for us, making cheap weekend trips possible.

One other good use of the pass would be for positioning flights. Sometimes you’ll find international awards out of a different airport than your home airport. Southwest might be a good option to position you for those flights (especially with the free checked bags). Having the Companion Pass makes those positioning flights more affordable.

The full pass would normally be available for the reminder of the year in which you earned it, plus the following year.

Other Considerations

The Companion Pass also works with adding someone on a business trip. I had to take work trips that required me to purchase through a specific vendor. There were no problems adding Jenn as my companion separately on those Southwest tickets. You can easily add your designated companion at any point after Southwest issues your ticket; it doesn’t need to be all booked at the same time.

While you can add your companion at any time, I’d recommend not waiting too late to add your companion. Flights can and do sell out as the travel date approaches and if there is no seat for your companion, you’re out of luck.

You must designate your companion and you can only change the person three times per year. That’s to prevent gaming of the system by having a rotating committee accompany you.

Speaking of gaming the system, do not abuse the Companion Pass. Someone got the not-so-wise idea to have your companion board the flight first, then you (the person who paid full price for the ticket) cancel your flight after that person boarded. The idea was to get the companion onto the flight for free but the one who earned the Companion Pass never intended to travel. That causes a problem in the system, as you might imagine. If caught, expect staff to remove the whole plane to find the culprit.

Are you planning to take advantage?

Suggested reading:

• Southwest Airlines Destroys Its ‘Wanna Get Away’ Fares
• Southwest Drops Free Bags, Free Changes, Expires Credits, and More
• Why You Need to Collect Southwest Miles