DW & I are pondering getting a SWA credit card, looks like it is issued from Chase and has some good incentives like 50K points (not miles or $) and no foreign transaction fee but it costs $99 a year. Anyone have one of these? How do the points work out relative to miles or dollars when booking flights? Any issues on booking foreign travel? There seen to be other incentives like occasional extra points for certain travel , car rental or hotel bookings, but theses don't seem compelling to me, am I missing something?
I signed up for the SWA card about 2 years ago. Silly me, I didn't read the fine print about the companion pass. Don't know if it still applies, but just after I passed my 1 year anniversary (and missed it by about 1,500 miles), if you accumulate 100,000 miles in a year, you get a companion pass where your companion flies with you for either free or just $99/ticket (or $99 for the whole year). I assumed that the 50,000 free miles you get when joining didn't count towards the 100,000 miles, but found out after the fact that I had just missed it.
Regarding points - just log onto the swa.com website and you can pick any ticket, and click on the fare page to show the fares in either $ or points. The points on SWA when comparing them to a plane ticket are 'worth', I think, about maybe 1.3 cents per mile (or, about 1.3% of every dollar you spend on the credit card gets converted to miles for airfare).
The one good thing about SWA: there are no 'limited capacity' seats for FF miles. If there is a seat, you can redeem points. Only catch is, the point cost may be somewhat high, depending on how far in advance you are looking, or how many seats are left.
But, on the flip side, if they have their crazy sales with flights for $200 roundtrip, the corresponding point "cost" is also equally low. So you could get a roundtrip flight during one of their sales for very few points.
They also give you 4 flight coupons each year with your $99 card fee, PLUS (I think) something like 9,000 miles for your $99 annual card fee. And any flights you buy with your SWA visa get double miles (but most airlines often give you extra miles if you buy a ticket with their branded credit card).
I suppose the slight "benefit" of SWA compared to other airlines is that you can use the points equally on any flight. With many airlines, they have more FF seats available on the redeye or less desirable flights (or charge you double FF miles for flights the same day, but a more popular time). But with SWA, if they have a cheap seat available on a non-stop popular flight, you can use your points for it.
