Would you like to take a friend with you on all your next flights? Would you like to discover the World with someone? And would you like to save a lot of money in the process? Today’s trick will only work if you’re based in the US, but it can be a real saving for if you travel regularly with a friend or a partner.

Southwest airlines is the world’s largest Low Cost Carrier. They fly to more than 99 destinations in the US, and Latin America.

Discover the Southwest Companion Pass

Even though Southwest is a Low Cost Carrier, they have an interesting frequent flyer program called Rapid Rewards. The way it works is quite straightforward:

Earning points

When flying with Southwest, you get a minimum of 6 points per dollar spent. When spending money with a Southwest branded credit card, you get a minimum of 1 point per dollar spent (more on that later). There are a few other options to get points through a few of the airline partners.
Redeeming points
There’s no blackout date with Southwest. It means that if a seat can be bought with cash, it can be paid with points.

Status

The most interesting part of the Rapid Rewards program is the tier status. If you earn 35,000 miles in a calendar year (Jan 1st – Dec 31st), you get the A-List status. It comes with priority boarding and extra points when you fly. If you earn 70,000 points in a calendar year, you’re upgraded to A-List Preferred. Even more points and free WiFi. But the most interesting tier is the last one. It’s called the “Companion Pass”:

Companion Pass is the benefit that allows you to choose one person to fly with you, free of airline charges (does not include taxes and fees from $5.60 one-way) every time you purchase or redeem points for a flight. To qualify, simply fly 100 qualifying one-way flights or earn 110,000 qualifying points in a calendar year, and you’ll earn Companion Pass for the following full calendar year, plus the remainder of the year in which you earned it.

100 one-way flights. That is a lot of flying. You could do it… or you could look at getting 110,000 points by flying. It means you need to spend more than $10,000 in a calendar year on flight tickets with Southwest. As you’d probably expect from now, there are a few ways to get it way cheaper and it’s actually quite simple. And now is the best way to preparing for it.

How to get 110,000 points quickly

As you saw above, you need to earn 110,000 points in a calendar year to get the Companion pass for the following full calendar year, plus remainder of the year in which you earned it.

It means that if you find a way to earn 110,000 points in January 2019, you’d get the companion pass until December 2020. Almost two years of taking a friend on your next adventures with you.

And guess what? It’s feasible. It’s actually quite easy if you’re a business owner (can be a side hustle).

Enter the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card and the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card.

Let’s start with the personal card, the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card. This card costs $99 a year. Chase currently has a special sign-up bonus when you get this card. If you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months of getting the card, you’ll receive 40,000 points. Can you spend a thousand bucks within the next 3 months? I bet you can. As you get 1 point per dollar spent, you should have roughly 41,000 points. Only 69,000 points to go.

Let’s now look at the business card, the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card. This card also costs $99 a year and it’s aimed at business owners. If you’re selling stuff on ebay, you could technically be considered a business owner. Just enter your social security number on the application form. The current sign-up bonus is a bit higher. If you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months of getting the card, you’ll receive 60,000 points. Can you spend three thousands on your business within the next 3 months? If you can’t, I might advise you to work on your business plan. As you also get 1 point per dollar spent, you should have roughty 63,000 points with that card.

It seems you’re now only 6,000 points short of getting the Companion pass. From that point, the easiest might be to spend $6,000 on any of the cards. Or to spend $3,000 on your next Southwest flights. The points for the amount will post immediately. The points for flying will post after you fly. There are more ways that I’ll cover in another article.

How to maximize the duration of your Companion Pass

As you probably understood, the goal now is to have 110,000 points to your account as early as possible in January. The way to optimize this is by taking opportunity of the fact that points earned on your credit card won’t post to your account until the statement period closes.

Therefore you should apply for the card as soon as possible. When the card is approved, you could change the “Bill Due Date” to the end of the month. By doing this, the statement period would closes a few days later, i.e around 4-5 days later.

Then in December, spend the money with the cards to get the bonuses. Sign-up bonuses will then post in early 2019.

Then it’ll be time to fly around… a lot…

Cathay Pacific is the flag-carrier of Hong-Kong and one of the best airline of Asia. Today, there is a way to get to Hong-Kong on Cathay Pacific Business Class on the Boeing 777-300 for the price of EUR 1,600 instead of 5,000.

To get this great fare, we need to use a promotion from one of their partner: Alaska Airlines. Based out of Seattle, Alaska Airlines has a very special frequent traveler program called MileagePlan. With this program, you can redeem flights on some interesting airlines such as Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates or Icelandair.

Alaska Airlines sells you an unlimited amount of miles per year at the regular price of $1,182.50 for 40,000 miles (or 2.95 CPM). On a regular basis, Alaska Airlines runs special promotions and today their promotion is quite interesting. It consists of a mistery bonus of 35%, 40% or 50% bonus. You will only know your personal bonus when checking your account.

Let me walk you through the process. If you haven’t already, you must create an account with Mileage Plan.

After creating the account, you can check your bonus level.

Did you get 50%? I got a 40% bonus.

Here is the exact bonus I got:

Buy:	Bonus:
0–9,000 miles	No bonus
10,000–19,000 miles	20% bonus miles
20,000–39,000 miles	30% bonus miles
40,000–60,000 miles	40% bonus miles

I can buy any value between 40,000 and 60,000 miles and get 40% extra miles. If I buy 40,000 miles for $1,182.50, I will get 56,000 miles. A value of 2.12 CPM. If you need more than 60,000 miles, just buy multiple packages of 40,000-60,000 miles.

Let’s have a look at how to use these miles:

The MileagePlan award chart is mostly limited to flights from and to North America but there are a few gems such as Europe to Hong-Kong on Cathay Pacific in Business Class for 85,000 miles round trip. At 2.12 CPM, you get a Paris to Hong-Kong and back or a Zurich to Hong-Kong and back for $1,800. At today’s exchange rate, it means EUR 1,600.

If you get the 50% bonus, you will buy at 1.97 CPM. The flight will then be at $1,700 (roughly EUR 1,500)

Wouldn’t you love to sit in that chair for 12 hours:

Again, here is the link to the Alaska Airlines mistery bonus promotion

This promotion is valid until September 29th, 2016. So hurry and buy your miles today.

Will you buy miles today?

Last week, I told you how to get from Europe to India with Lufthansa First Class for less than EUR 2,000. Today, I’ll show you how you can get to Botswana (or any other African country south of the Sahara) in business class for EUR 1,500 roundtrip.

Lifemiles, our beloved Colombian Dealer just announced a special promotion with the Brazilian Blog Passageiro de Primeira. Instead of the 130% bonus we saw last week, Lifemiles is offering 140% bonus for a very limited time.

With this promotion, if you buy 101,000 miles for $3,333, you will get 141,400 bonus miles. This is a total of 242,400 miles or 1.375 cent per mile. To use this promotion, you should first open an account with LifeMiles if you haven’t already. Then, register for the promotion between Sep 19th to Sep 26th here. You then have to wait 24 hours to make sure that your bonus is activated and you can buy the miles on Lifemiles.com between Sep 20th and Sep 27th 2016.

Here is a summary of the bonuses:

When you buy between	Receive	Accrue up to
LM 2.000 – 50.000	2X1 + 15%*	LM 107.500 When buying LM 50.000
LM 51.000 – 100.000	2X1 + 30%*	LM 230.000 When buying LM 100.000
LM 101.000 – 150.000	2X1 + 40%*	LM 360.000 When buying LM 150.000
* The bonus percentage is calculated based on the miles purchased without taking into account the 2×1 bonus. This exclusive offer is valid for subscription from Sep 19th to Sep 26th and to buy from Sep 20th to Sep 27th 2016.

If you check the Lifemiles Award Chart, you’ll see that Europe to South Africa is 55,000 miles one-way (+ taxes).

Here we’re talking about the “South Africa Region”, not the country. Lifemiles defines South Africa Region as all the following countries:

Angola	Guinea	Sao Tomas and Príncipe
Benin	Guinea Bissau	Senegal
Botswana	Guinea Ecuatorial	Seychelles
Burkina	Kenya	Sierra Leone
Burundi	Lesotho	Somalia
Cameroon	Liberia	South Africa
Cape Verde	Madagascar	South Sudan
Central African	Malawi	St. Helena
Chad	Mali	Sudan
Comoras	Mauritania	Swaziland
Congo	Mauritius	Tanzania
Cote d’ivoire	Mozambique	Togo
Democratic Republic of Congo	Namibia	Uganda
Eritrea	Niger	Yibuti
Ethiopia	Nigeria	Zambia
Gabon	Reunion	Zimbabwe
Gambia	Rwanda
Ghana	Sahara

So you could fly from Europe to Johannesburg and connect to Gaborone, Botswana with South African Airlines in Business class for a 55,000 miles + EUR 150 one way. You could return with Ethiopian via Addis Abeba.

So remember the procedure:

1. Create an account with LifeMiles
2. Register for the promotion between Sep 19th and Sep 26th
3. Wait 24 hours
4. Buy the miles between Sep 20th and Sep 27th 2016
5. Book your flight

Will you buy miles?

MTX connect is mobile phone operator with Europe-wide data connection for a very low price.

They are running a promotion where you can get 6,000 Lufthansa Miles&More for €20. How does it work?

1. Order an MTX Connect SIM card and receive it by post
2. Activate your MTX Connect SIM card. During the registration, provide your Miles & More service card number
3. Receive a 5,000 miles welcome bonus with your first balance topup to €20 or more.
4. Earn 50 award miles per each €1 spent with MTX Connect (i.e. if you use the €20 credit, you will get 1,000 miles)

When you use the credit it costs you the following:

Unlimited Daily
€9.99/day
No data volume limit
Valid for 24 hours from the moment of activation

Optimal Daily
€3.50/day
Limited offer! Up to 150MB
Valid for 24 hours from the moment of activation

Pay As You Go
€0.045/1MB
Per MB. No data volume limit
Valid anytime

Monthly Pass
€29/month
Up to 1GB
Valid for 30 days from the moment of activation

As such, €20 give you two days of unlimited surf or almost 6 days of limited surf.

Get it now on http://miles.mtxc.eu/en/

You know what sucks? Flying long haul in economy. Food is usually bland. You can’t sleep and you feel like crap when you land at your destination.

What if I gave you a 3-step method to fly from Europe to India in First Class for less than $2000? (Hint: you can also fly from US to Europe and back or from Europe to US with the same method for about $100 more) If you’ve only flown economy, you can’t start to imagine the experience of flying business or first class. Depending on the airline, they will send a car to pick you up at home and bring you to the airport. Then, you will get access to the fast checkin lane. No need to wait with hundreds of people. Same thing for the security. What about taking the fast track directly to the lounge. You will relax with a glass of champagne. Someone will then escort you to the plane (it sometimes involves a Porsche Cayenne or another cool car) where you will discover a whole new world: a seat who turns into a bed, gourmet meals and all-you-can-drink champagne (You’re right, I love champagne).

The experience continues after landing as you can access the lounge and take a shower before leaving the airport. If you want to leave the airport quickly, airline personnel will escort you through security and immigration. Did you know that some airline guarantee that you will be in your car 15 minutes after the airplane doors opened.

As you’ve been experiencing so far, I used to fly economy. Flying at the front of the plane was part of my wildest dreams. But I couldn’t imagine spending tens of thousands of Euros for this. I spent my money for crappy sandwiches in the terminal and I stayed in lines for hours until I discovered travel hacking. Travel hacking is the way of finding tricks and loopholes in the travel industry to maximise the travel experience. Travel is not free and never will be, but it can be cheap and very comfortable. It’s now been ten years I haven’t set foot in an economy cabin except on a few two-hours flights in Europe or Asia.

Today, I’d like to teach you an amazing method to get you to India in First Class for under $2000. If you want to fly in Business class, it will be under $1500. Almost the price of Economy!

Are you hooked?

In order to work with this method, you need to know a bit about the wonderful world of air miles. Most airlines have a frequent-flyer program to reward their best customers. The more you fly, the more miles or points you get. You can then use these miles for upgrades or flight tickets (Don’t think about using your miles to buy something from the airline shop – such as a suitcase or an iPod – this is the worst use of miles). The amount of miles you get for a flight is usually based on the airline flown, the class of service (economy, business or first), the distance flown and the price of your ticket. The best use of your miles is for award tickets on premium cabin of top airlines. Premium cabin means Business and First class. Top airlines means airlines such as Swiss, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, EVA air, Qatar airways, Etihad or Emirates. US airlines such as United, Delta or American Airlines usually don’t make it to my “top airlines” list.

The method

First, I need to introduce you to my Colombian dealer. No, it’s not what you think.

Avianca is Colombia’s national airline and you will need to open a frequent flyer account with them even if you never plan to fly them. Their frequent flyer program is called LifeMiles. As Avianca is part of Star Alliance, one of the three main airlines alliance, you will be able to use LifeMiles to book your seats for your trip to India on Lufthansa First Class.

So, if you don’t have an account already, go to www.lifemiles.com and open it now. Joining LifeMiles is quick and easy. You’re less than 60 seconds away from the many benefits LifeMiles can offer. Come back here when you’re done, I’ll be waiting.

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Are you back? Is your account ready? Good. Let me tell you why you need that account: you can get LifeMiles by flying any Star Alliance airline but you can also buy them. Usually you can buy 1,000 miles for $33. You can buy up to 150,000 miles per year (for the price of $4,950). Seems expensive? It is and I don’t want you to spend that amount. Except today! LifeMiles has a great promotion until September 10th, 2016 where you will get 130% bonus miles. That is if you buy 150,000 miles at $4,950, you actually get 195,000 bonus miles, for a grand total of 345,000 miles. That is 1.43 cent per mile (or CPM).

Now that you know that you can buy this, let see how you could use it.

As I said above, you should use the miles for award tickets on premium LifeMiles partners. The good news: Lufthansa is a partner and you can find availability on Lufthansa First Class with LifeMiles. Did you know that Lufthansa is the single largest consumer of caviar in the world? Lufthansa serves caviar to all its passengers in First Class.

Let’s look at the amount of miles we would need to fly Lufthansa First Class from Europe to India (or another Star Alliance airline to Sri Lanka, Maldives or Nepal).

LifeMiles has a pretty generous award chart. Here is part of it:

As you can see on the LifeMiles award chart, you need 60,000 miles for a one-way award ticket from Europe to Central Asia. 120,000 for a round trip. As we’re buying miles at 1.43 cent, we’re paying $1,716 for 120,000 miles. You will have to add the taxes, but we’re getting back to this in a minute.

You can search for flight availability on the LifeMiles website. Keep in mind that LifeMiles has access to Lufthansa First Class 14 days before departure. Let’s look at a First Class from Geneva to Delhi on September 15th.

There are three options on that day:

As you see, the system confirms that the flight will cost 60,000 miles. With LifeMiles, you only need 40% of this amount and you can buy the missing miles during checkout at the price of 1.5 cent per mile. Today this option is not the most interesting as we’re buying at 1.43, but when LifeMiles doesn’t have any promotion it can be interesting.

We can then review our flight booking.

We’re looking at Lufthansa 1213 from Geneva to Frankfurt connecting to LH76o to Delhi on the Airbus A380. 3 hours to connect is a good option in Frankfurt as it allows you to visit the First Class Terminal. Here is the seat you get when flying on Lufthansa First Class in the airbus A380:

Let’s have a look at our grand total here. To book this one-way flight from Geneva to Delhi, it costs us 60,000 miles + $96.33. At 1.43 cent per mile, 60,000 costs you $858. $858 plus 96.33 is $954.33. Less than $1,000 for a one-way Lufthansa First Class trip from Europe to India. Keep in mind that if you wanted to buy a regular ticket for this trip, it will cost you around $10,000.

As I said above, Lufthansa First Class tickets are only available 14 days before flying with LifeMiles. What if we want to travel around India for 2 months? We could buy a return ticket in Business class (45,000 miles + roughly $100, a total of around $750) or we can wait and buy the ticket just before coming back. Your call!

Buy your miles and get back to the booking page. Confirm the booking with passenger name and credit card number for the taxes. LifeMiles will show you your booking summary. WRITE DOWN YOUR CONFIRMATION NUMBER. Before closing the window, go to CheckMyTrip, and verify that your booking is correct. Within a few hours, CheckMyTrip should show you an eTicket number. You should also receive your electronic ticket by email from LifeMiles within a few minutes (sometimes the email doesn’t make it to your inbox, check your spam folder). If you don’t get any confirmation, you can always check on CheckMyTrip that the booking is correct (if you have an eTicket number, you should be all set).

Pro Tip

After getting the eTicket number, I usually give a call to the operating carrier (in our case, Lufthansa) to check that the booking looks all good on their side and to confirm the seat assignment. Seatguru has seat maps of most airplanes and shows you which one you should avoid.

Things to keep in mind

• The LifeMiles call center is difficult to work with. If you need to call them, better not.
• You only need 40% of the amount of miles in your account for a ticket. LifeMiles will sell you the missing amount of miles at 1.5 cent per mile.
• Lufthansa First Class tickets are usually available 14 days before the trip
• You can get a First Class ticket for one way and returning in Business Class. It will cost you the price of the one-way first and one-way business tickets.

Will you buy a flight ticket? Feel free to comment below and share this article with your friends.