Southwest Airlines travelers woke up to an unpleasant surprise on the morning of March 4, 2025: an unannounced devaluation of the airline's Rapid Rewards loyalty program. The airline has devalued Rapid Rewards points before, but the changes it is making this time are quite different than the previous way in which it made changes to the program.
Southwest is the airline my family flies most and has been most loyal to over the years, so naturally I did an immediate deep dive into what this means for myself and my fellow Southwest frequent flyers.
What's Changing?
First things first before you read the headlines and think the sky is falling — calling what happened a devaluation at all is somewhat questionable. Most folks will hear that word and think the points they have already earned are now less valuable. That isn't the case here. Southwest isn't making changes to the award redemption side at all (that's what it did do the last several times it changed its program in both 2021 and 2024).
If traveler wants to purchase a flight priced at $200 with Rapid Rewards points, it costs the same number of points today as it did yesterday. Anyone with a stash of Rapid Rewards points should not fear that their points are now "worth less" (at least not yet). That's the situation my family and I find ourselves in so.... whew.
What Southwest has instead done is change how many points travelers can EARN through one of the methods that travelers can earn Rapid Rewards — specifically, when they spend money to purchase tickets to fly on the airline. The devaluation is on the earning side only.
When a customer purchases airfare, Southwest applies a multiplier to the base fares it sell (the price minus taxes and fees) and awards the product of the fare and multiplier as Rapid Rewards points. For the two cheapest fare classes, that multiplier is going down. For the most expensive fare class, it is actually rising.
The changes are as follows, from most expensive to least expensive fare class:
- Business Select: Up 12x to 14x (Previously 12 points earned per dollar spent; Now 14 points earned per dollar spent)
- Anytime: No change, 10x (10 points earned per dollar spent)
- Wanna Get Away Plus: Down 8x to 6x (Previously 8 points earned per dollar spent; Now 6 points earned per dollar spent)
- Wanna Get Away: Down 6x to 2x (Previously 6 points earned per dollar spent; Now 2 points earned per dollar spent)
The vast majority of budget-minded travelers making their travel plans at least several weeks in advance (like myself) purchase the least expensive Wanna Get Away fares. So that means you will now be earning ⅓ of the points you did before on those fares when you purchase flights with money. And that's a pretty significant devaluation.
Crunching the Numbers
With such a major change to the multipliers, I suspected that these changes might create some unexpected results and could mean that travelers might want to purchase different fare types than they did before the change. I did a number of test searches to see how things played out. Spoiler alert - I was right.
To do the math, I took a look at the cash fares Southwest is charging on various routes and how many Rapid Rewards purchasing each fare would earn. I then calculated the value of the points "rebate" that Southwest offered on each fare, estimating that Southwest Rapid Rewards are currently worth right at 1.4 cents per point (applying Frequent Miler's 2025 calculation which is deeply data-based).
That helped me arrive at what each fare actually costs to the traveler: the cash paid minus the estimated value of the points rebate.
Unsurprising, the vast majority of the time, the results make sense. Even with a much higher rebate, Business Select fares still cost more than Anytime fares, which cost more than Wanna Get Away Plus fares, which cost more than Wanna Get Away fares. One example to demonstrate on a route I fly often between Northern and Southern California.
Here is how the numbers shake out:
As you can see on this route, it still makes sense to purchase the cheapest $49 Wanna Get Away fare for most travelers. It makes no sense to pay $15 more to upgrade WGA to WGA+ to only earn about $3 more in Rapid Rewards points.
But there are outliers and exceptions to this rule. I found a number of flights (particularly on very expensive routes) where Wanna Get Away Plus fares are effectively cheaper than Wanna Get Away fares when you take into account the value of the extra points earned. Take this flight from Houston to Hawaii's Big Island during peak spring break.
Related: Everything you need to know about Southwest's Hawaii flights
Wanna Get Away Plus ($627) costs just $20 more than Wanna Get Away ($607). But purchasing WGA+ earns 3450 Rapid Rewards points while regular WGA earns a mere 1111. The extra 2399 points earned (valued at 1.4 cents per point) are worth about $33. That rebate more than cancels out the extra $20 fare difference, making it smarter for a traveler who regularly redeems Rapid Rewards points to purchase the Wanna Get Away Plus fare.
But the oddities don't end there. On this same flight, it might actually make more sense for some travelers to purchase the $737 Business Select fare or $687 Anytime fare over the other cheaper fares. Here are the full numbers I crunched:
As you can see, when you consider the much bigger Rapid Rewards rebate, the two higher fares ultimately cost just a few dollars more than all the other fares. But Business Select fares come with priority group A1-15 boarding and Anytime fares come with Early Bird Check-In.
That means a traveler inclined to purchase Early Bird Check-in to get a better seat on the airline (at least while the airline still has open seating) might want to purchase a higher fares class if it's less than the cost of Early Bird. On this flight, Early Bird costs $25 - more than the differential between the Anytime fare the WGA and WGA+ fares. And a mere $5 difference separates Anytime from Business Select, which might be worth it for a traveler who really wants an even better seat from Priority Boarding (or even just that free drink voucher that comes with Business Select fares too!).
Key Takeaways
Do the Math & (Perhaps) Purchase a Different Fare
A major lesson learned from this exercise is that savvy Southwest travelers will now need to do a little math to figure out which fare is actually the cheapest before they purchase. For very expensive routes, it may be cheaper to purchase a slightly higher fare for the much higher rebate.
This is especially true if you are someone inclined to purchase Early Bird (and perhaps when seat assignments arrive, a seat assignment).
Editor's Note March 6, 2025: A friend of mine (the blogger behind the site Play Party Plan) wisely suggested I share the spreadsheet I used to calculate the fares above so others could do the math easily themselves. I've made a public version of it with instructions available on a Google Sheet here. It's view-only, so simply make a copy of it into your own Google Drive (or download it in another spreadsheet format) and use away!
WGA is the new Basic Economy
Another key takeaway is the obvious one that most Southwest travelers will earn a lot less from actually flying on the airline. The clear "losers" from this change are Southwest customers who ordinarily purchase Wanna Get Away (and to a lesser extent, Wanna Get Away Plus) fares. They will earn a much smaller rebate on their airfare spending. They will also have a longer road to earn the Companion Pass or A-List/A-List Preferred status if they previously earned it through points alone (the number of flight segments needed to earn status remains unchanged).
It seems clear to me that Southwest is gutting the Wanna Get Away fare and making it more like Basic Economy on other major U.S. airlines. That makes sense given that we know WGA fares won't include the ability to pick your seat at the time of purchase when Southwest rolls out seat assignments.
The goal is likely to make Wanna Get Away Plus the regular economy default that most passengers purchase, like regular economy is for American, United, and Delta. And to be fair, that's worked for those airlines. I never ever purchase Basic Economy when I fly them.
The sky isn't falling
Even as disappointing as this devaluation is for many Southwest travelers, I do think it's important to put this program change in perspective. It does not mean all hope is lost when it comes to the Rapid Rewards program more generally. There are a lot of other (and better) ways to earn Rapid Rewards points than simply purchasing airfare. Yes, that may seem counterintuitive, but that's actually how most frequent flyer programs are these days!
Personally, our household earns the vast majority of our points through Southwest credit cards—either from signup bonuses on new cards or spending on those cards (or on cards that earn points that can be transferred to Southwest). We almost never purchase airfare with cash, instead redeeming points for our flight purchases. (Find out more of my hacks and tips for booking flights with points to maximize Southwest fare sales.)
As a result, we will not feel the effect of this program modification almost at all. In contrast, if the airline had instead devalued on the points redemption side as it did the last two times, we would have felt that significantly.
For now as well, the bulk of Southwest's Companion Pass program remains unchanged. We save thousands in airfare each year as a family by almost always having one of those. Southwest has actually been stepping up promotions of late where travelers can easily earn a limited time Companion Pass, so paying attention and crunching the numbers on those promotions can still help your family fly the airline for less.
There are some winners
There are even some "winners" who come out ahead with this change. Southwest customers who ordinarily purchase Business Select Fares will now earn more points on their spending and have an easier path to status earning.
Will Southwest investors will win too? It's simply too early to tell. The airline is in the middle of a major shakeup financially, and this change is clearly meant to make the Rapid Rewards program and the airline more profitable. But there is a risk to devaluations. They can backfire, turning more people off and costing a beloved airline goodwill that has real cash value too. How the story will play out here remains to be seen.
As always, I'm rooting for my favorite airline to make it while still keeping the core of what makes it special and unique. But like all customers, I vote with my pocketbook.
H/T to Gary Leff at View from the Wing for breaking this story.
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