New Southwest Airlines flier loyalty program kicks in this week

By Richard N. Velotta

Monday, Feb. 28, 2011 | 3 a.m.

The huge change in Southwest Airlines’ Rapid Rewards loyalty card program is about to begin.

After about six weeks of explaining how “Rapid Rewards 2.0” will work, the Dallas-based airline — by far the busiest at McCarran International Airport — will make the official switch to the new system March 1.

At that time, Southwest’s system of awarding a free round-trip ticket after purchasing and traveling on 16 one-way trips goes away. In its place will be a points system based on how much a customer pays for a ticket. Redemption will be based on points with high-demand flights costing more than low-demand flights.

Because thousands of Nevadans possess a Southwest Rapid Rewards card, it’s time to understand some of the strategies in play with the new system.

And there may be many travelers out there who don’t have Rapid Rewards cards that should have them, even if they only fly once a year. With the new system, it makes sense to enroll.

So who better to ask about the advantages and disadvantages of the new Rapid Rewards than Tom Parsons, the bestfares.com travel guru who blogs frequently about taking advantage of airline freebies resulting from loyalty programs and oversold flights?

I caught up with Parsons when he was marveling at $3 fares between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the product of a fare war that erupted when Allegiant Air and JetBlue were duking it out for market share in the Long Beach, Calif., market and Southwest somehow became embroiled even through it doesn’t fly to Long Beach.

That was happening last week as Southwest jacked up fares overall by about $10 per round trip to compensate for higher fuel costs. (Fares between Las Vegas and Reno, incidentally, have shot through the roof. It was just a few months ago that the base fare was $59 one way; today, the cheapest one-way base fare on Southwest is $94, or $209 round trip with all taxes and fees.)

Parsons knows that the recent surgery Southwest performed on its frequent-flier program was done to take business away from rivals and to get more of the high-paying business travelers to take a look at Southwest.

Business fliers often ignore Southwest because it doesn’t have amenities such as a first-class cabin or preflight seat selection.

“They’re trying to steal from the Americans, Uniteds and Deltas of the world,” Parsons said. “If you’re a short-haul flier on Southwest, you’re probably not going to like the changes very much.”

The way Parsons and most of the other fare gurus see it, there are some goods and some bads with the new Southwest program.

First, the bad.

When Southwest first announced details of Rapid Rewards 2.0, critics jumped on what was being taken away. The biggie is the free flight after 16 one-way trips.

Many Nevadans use Southwest as a short-hop shuttle to California or the other end of the state. Southwest is the only carrier with nonstop flights to Reno and Las Vegans frequently use Southwest to go there and to five Southern California airports — Los Angeles International, Burbank, Ontario, Orange County and San Diego. Among those six destinations, Southwest averages 58 flights a day.

Reno residents use Southwest the same way to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Sacramento.

Under the old system, a customer could fly eight round trips to one of those cities, spending a little more than $800 in the process, and get a free round-trip flight anywhere on the Southwest system — Florida (seven cities), New York City (Islip, LaGuardia and, now, Newark, N.J.) or New England (Boston, Providence, R.I., and Manchester, N.H.). One ticket could run as much as $1,000 round trip.

But no more.

Under the new system, customers will accrue points whenever they buy a ticket on the airline’s website with higher multiples for higher levels of Southwest’s three-tiered pricing. For the airline’s “Wanna Get Away” fares — the least expensive tickets Southwest sells — customers will earn six points for every dollar spent on a fare.

For the second-tier “Anytime” tickets, customers earn 10 points per dollar spent. For the highest priced “Business Select” level, customers will get 12 points per dollar spent.

When redeeming points for flights, 60 points equal a dollar, so a $100 fare would cost 6,000 points.

It’s obvious what Southwest is doing — it’s upselling the product.

For a flight from Las Vegas to Reno on April 27 and a return on April 28, the “Wanna Get Away” fare would generate 1,254 points. The “Anytime” fare on the same date would earn 3,510 points. And, on “Business Select,” 4,572 points.

If all you do is fly to and from Reno, the cost of the cheapest Reno flights on those dates would be 12,540 points so it would only take 10 round trips to get a free one for that route. Or three round trips if you buy “Business Select.”

What that means for those who fly the short hauls to get the long-haul reward is that it would take about 23 one-way trips between Las Vegas and Reno to earn enough points to afford a round trip from Las Vegas to Orlando, Fla., instead of 16.

Parsons said that short-haul flight collectors are the most displeased with the new system. But he also argues that the new system is fairer to all because you get what you pay for.

But not all the news is bad with the new program.

Probably the biggest move for Southwest is that there are no blackout dates for free flights. While it may cost more to acquire tickets on some days — traveling the day before Thanksgiving comes to mind — it’s still possible to fly for free then if you accumulate enough points.

That’s something the other carriers don’t have. To cash in mileage or points for free travel on other airlines, a customer has to check with the airline to make sure the date is available. But Rapid Rewards 2.0 has no such blackouts.

There are other changes that are mostly consumer friendly:

• Under the new system, Southwest issues a ticket when a customer requests it, assuming enough points have been accumulated. Under the old system, the airline issued a ticket as soon as a customer completed the 16th flight. On the date of issuance, the clock would start and a customer had one year to use it. The new system enables customers to save for a big purchase.

• Under Rapid Rewards 2.0, points earned on Southwest flights can be used to purchase airline tickets on other carriers for flights to Hawaii, Alaska and international destinations, thanks to an agreement Southwest forged with Maritz Travel. But there is a catch. To take advantage of the Maritz program, a customer has to have a Southwest-branded Visa credit card. Most consumer advocates advise against acquiring credit cards that have an annual fee and the Southwest Visa costs a user $59 a year.

• Under the old system, credits expired 24 months after they were earned. As a result, it didn’t make sense for some travelers to participate. The way my in-laws travel, for example, a card didn’t make sense because they would fly once or twice a year. After two years, their credits would expire and they’d never be able to collect the 16 needed for a free ticket. But under the new program, points won’t expire as long as there’s activity on the account at least once every two years. That means a not-so-frequent flier could still get a free ticket over three or four years.

The new Rapid Rewards system may inspire more airlines to compete with similar policies on their frequent-flier programs.

Although a new policy in Delta Air Lines’ SkyMiles program took effect before Rapid Rewards 2.0 was announced — that as of Jan. 1, miles accumulated in that program would not expire — it’s clear that airlines may revisit some of their policies to stay competitive with Southwest.

“It’ll be interesting to see if there are any big changes,” Parsons said.

InAirtainment downloads

Southwest Airlines doesn’t have in-flight entertainment systems on its planes, but the company is trying the next best thing, sort of.

Through an agreement the airline has developed with iTunes, Southwest is offering 20 free song downloads by accessing Southwest’s InAirtainment Web page.

Enter your e-mail address to get a download code and iTunes will send a playlist of 20 songs by artists “about to fly.”

The current list includes songs by Ellie Goulding, Chris Bathgate, the Black Heart Procession, Agent Ribbons, Papercuts and Geographer.

I wish I were hip enough to say that I’ve heard of all of them.

Bags at the Sahara

Bags to Go Enterprises, which offers off-site baggage check-in services for passengers flying from McCarran, has a new location to add to the seven sites the company offers its services.

The secure service, which is monitored by the Transportation Security Administration and costs passengers $10 per bag, is available at the Sahara. Bags to Go outlets exist at Luxor, MGM Grand, Venetian, Palazzo, McCarran’s Rent-A-Car Center, Las Vegas Convention Center and Sands Expo & Convention Center.

In addition to operating in Las Vegas, Bags to Go also offers services to passengers embarking and disembarking from cruises in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Miami.

BlogWorld moves

The world’s largest social media conference and new media industry trade show is leaving Las Vegas.

The organizers of BlogWorld made it official last week: In 2011, the event will move to the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles Nov. 3-5. For the past five years, BlogWorld has made the Mandalay Bay Convention Center home for its 4,000 attendees, 200 sponsor companies, 200 speakers and 100 educational sessions.

In addition to the big fall event, organizers said they would have an East Coast version at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City May 24-26.

Bloggers and social media users that are believed to have a monthly reach of an estimated 250 million followers are moving to L.A. because of the convergence the Internet is having with Hollywood industries.

“Los Angeles is the home of the film, television and music industries and also has the single largest population of bloggers and digital content creators in the country,” said Rick Calvert, CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld. “That puts L.A. at the center of the convergence of new and traditional media making it the obvious choice for us.”

Las Vegas will lose an estimated $2.9 million in spending as a result of the move.