In July of 2022, Southwest made a fantastic change to their program; flight credits no longer expire. Previously, they expired 1 year from the date of the original flight purchase which in some cases made them tough to use. Unfortunately, as of May 28th, flights credits on new bookings will have 6 or 12 month expiration from the original booking date based on the fare class purchased. I will cover these upcoming changes in more detail in a future post.
In the past there were lots of complaints online because people did not understand the expiration rules and were stuck in situations where they could not use the credits before they expired. Another case was frustration with using gift cards (which don’t expire), buying a flight and having to later cancel, but then not being able to use those funds for a different traveler. For me personally, I ended up in this situation where I had several hundred dollars in flight credits for each of my family members thanks to this trick but I could not use them for my daughter because she was currently my companion for Companion Pass so I could add her to my flights for just the $5.60 in taxes each way.
Regardless of the expiration policy of a particular flight credit, there can still be one catch; for Wanna Get Away fares, credits are tied to the individual and are not transferrable. I don’t know about you, but I tend to book Wanna Get Away fares because they are the cheapest. Occasionally I will buy the Wanna Get Away Plus fare for the free same day change option if my plans are not 100% firm, but 90% of the time I purchase Wanna Get Away fares. Another feature of the Wanna Get Away Plus (and Anytime and Business Select) fares is the ability to transfer flight credits if your plans change and you need to cancel your flight.
Fortunately, there is a pretty easy trick to convert those Wanna Get Away non-transferrable credits into transferrable credits so they can be shared with friends or family members; just book a Wanna Get Away Plus, Anytime or Business Select fare that consumes the credit or credits and then cancel that booking. The resulting credit will now be transferrable. That’s it!
Now, this is something that might be frowned upon if you did it often as you are not supposed to make speculative bookings, so maybe you book a trip that you plan to fly and then quickly your plans change, and you need to cancel.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can use up to 3 forms of payment for a new booking so when looking for flights to convert your credits to transferrable credits, look for flights that will fully or almost fully consume your credit(s). If for example, you have a $87 and a $50 credit, look for a flight where the Wanna Get Away Plus (or higher) fares are $135-137. You could also pick a fare that is slightly higher than the credit(s) you are trying to consume but you would need to then use cash as the last form of payment for the difference. I’ve done this a few times and don’t mind kicking in a few dollars to unlock the ability to transfer a larger credit.
One final tip is to not limit your search for these priced-just-right fares to your home airport. Try a few different city pairs and date ranges to get a feel for the normal pricing and in just a few minutes it should be pretty easy to find a combination that works well.
Let’s look at a real example to show how this works. I have a flight credit for $137.98 that is not transferrable. I found the below flight for $138 that consumes the credit and booked it as a Wanna Get Away Plus fare. Now that my plans changed, I was able to cancel it and voilà, now this credit is transferrable!
TL;DR – For flights booked until May 28th this year, Southwest flight credits no longer expire but flights booked as Wanna Get Away fares and then cancelled creates a credit that is not transferrable. A trick to convert those credits into transferrable credits is to use the credit(s) to book a Wanna Get Away Plus or higher fare in a similar amount and then cancel that booking if your plans change. The resulting new credit will be transferrable to a friend of family member.
