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A few months ago, I booked a flight from Chicago to Boston on Southwest for our Portland, Maine trip for 7,905 points at the Wanna Get Away Fare. Then just a week before the trip, I cancelled the booking and re-purchased a ticket with cash at the new Wanna Get Away Plus fare for $224. This move may seem highly unusual, and I’d have to agree. However, I had a good reason. And no, it wasn’t to save the points for a more expensive flight in the future (we have plenty of Southwest points saved up at the moment).

I cancelled and rebooked this flight to take advantage of the current Southwest promotion to earn more points to help me re-earn A-list status for 2023. Before I get much further, here’s a quick rundown of why this status is valuable to me:

A-List Benefits

Above is a list of all the benefits of having A-List or A-List Preferred status. To me, the priority boarding is worth the most. Thomas and I no longer have to set an alarm for exactly 24 hours before our flight to check in or risk getting C boarding passes. Now, Southwest gives us boarding positions automatically and we’ve never received anything other than an A boarding pass (and we’re usually between A15 and A30). The best part about this perk for us is that it applies to both the primary traveler and Companion Pass companion despite each person having a separate confirmation number.

The dedicated A-List member phone line has also come in handy plenty of times, as Southwest’s wait times can be hours long. The 25% earning bonus on points is the 3^rd benefit we seek A-List out for, as it helps us earn our Companion Pass faster. Another benefit we rarely use because we seldom check bags is the priority check-in lane, but it does come in handy when we need it.

To earn A-List status, you need to either fly 25 qualifying flight segments OR earn 35,000 Tier Qualifying Points (TQPs). For A-List Preferred, the numbers are doubled – 50 flight segments or 70,000 TQPs. Usually, the only flight segments that count are those paid for with cash, not points (but more on that below).

If you earn A-List status partway through the year, you get to start enjoying the perks immediately and continuing through the end of the following calendar year.

The Promotion

Southwest announced on September 21, 2022 that it would be offering Rapid Rewards members 3 ways to make earning A-List status easier:

They retroactively made any flights between January 1 and September 19, 2022 that were booked with points count towards the 25 flight segments you need in a year to quality for A-List (50 for A-List Preferred).
New flights booked with points and flown between September 21 and November 30, 2022 will count towards the 25 flight segments you need in a year to quality for A-List (50 for A-List Preferred).
New flights booked with cash will earn double Tier Qualifying Points (TQPs).

Note: option #1 was applied automatically to Rapid Reward members’ accounts, but anyone wanting to cash in on options 2 & 3 has to enroll in the promotion in their Rapid Rewards account before booking the flight. It only takes a couple of clicks.

Option #3 was the best option for us. We only had 17/25 flight segments and knew we weren’t going to fly 8 more qualifying Southwest flights by the end of the year, but we were only 2,592 TQPs away from requalifying for A-List, so that was the better route for me to get status. Unfortunately, all the flights we’ve booked for the rest of the year were booked with points, so we had no more opportunities to earn TQPs (which don’t hit your account until 72 hours after your flight).

How to Earn Tier Qualifying Points (TQPs)

Tier Qualifying Points can be confusing because not all Rapid Rewards points are Tier Qualifying Points. There are 2 ways to earn TQPs:

You earn 1,500 TQPs for every $10,000 you spend on your Rapid Rewards Priority, Performance Business, or Premier Credit Cards, up to a maximum of 15,000 TQPs/year (NOT enough to earn A-List through this route alone).
You earn TQPs on any flight booked with cash. The earnings rate depends on the fare class you book and is multiplied by the base fare (the price without taxes/fees). With the current promotion, all the earnings are multiplied by 2 (ex. the 6x base fare for Wanna Get Away is now 12x).

Note: even if you spend Rapid Reward points to book a flight, this doesn’t take away from the number of TQPs in your account. You can only earn TQPs throughout the year and they don’t reset until January 1.

Rebooking

Doing some quick math, I divided my 2,592 missing points by the 12 points I’d earn per dollar minimum on a cash flight to calculate that I needed to spend $216 on a base fare to requalify.

I decided to see what the next few flights I had booked were selling for in cash. I found that my next flight (MDW to BOS) had a Wanna Get Away Fare of $204. Not only was that number not enough, but the number shown on Southwest includes the taxes and fees (something I’m usually grateful for), so it wasn’t going to cut it. However, the Wanna Get Away Plus fare was $224 (including taxes/fees) and I’d earn 16 TQPs/dollar, which meant I only needed a base fare of $162 to requalify.

This was a good deal, so I cancelled my companion ticket and then cancelled my original flight booked with points (you have to do this in 2 separate steps or call Southwest to have them manually do this for you). The 7,905 points I’d originally paid were immediately put back into my account and I was able to quickly rebook with cash (using my Southwest Priority credit card to earn an additional 3 points/dollar to use on future flights).

Given that Southwest points are typically considered to be worth $0.014-0.018 each, the originally flight was worth ~$110-142, so I definitely paid more for this new booking, which is unsurprising because I rebooked it only 7 days out. However, the difference is partially made up with in the extra points I’ll earn and is ultimately worth it to me because of the value I see in having A-List status (the 25% earning bonus saves me 25,000 points towards a Companion Pass, so this slightly increased fare saves me money in the long run).

Cancelling reward flights and rebooking with cash isn’t something I plan to do often, but when status is on the line, it may be worth it.