Introduction

Chase ran one of the most generous Southwest Companion Pass offers in recent memory through March 18, 2026, awarding the pass directly from the welcome bonus on all three Southwest personal cards. The promotion ended six weeks ago, but it's worth documenting what was on the table, why it mattered, and what readers waiting for the next equivalent offer should watch for. Chase confirmed the offer in card-application disclosures and Southwest's co-brand pages during the promotional window, which ran from early January through mid-March 2026.

What the Offer Was

Through March 18, 2026, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus, Premier, and Priority personal cards each carried a Companion Pass in the welcome bonus, alongside a points haul that scaled with the annual fee.

  • Southwest Plus ($99 annual fee): Companion Pass valid through February 28, 2027, plus 20,000 bonus points after $3,000 in spend within three months.
  • Southwest Premier ($149 annual fee): Companion Pass valid through February 28, 2027, plus 30,000 bonus points after $4,000 in spend within three months.
  • Southwest Priority ($229 annual fee): Companion Pass valid through February 28, 2027, plus 40,000 bonus points after $5,000 in spend within three months.

The earned pass had a fixed expiration date of February 28, 2027, rather than the calendar-year-plus-the-following-year window readers get when they qualify the traditional way. Chase's standard underwriting applied, including the 5/24 rule and the one-personal-card-at-a-time restriction Southwest co-brands have always carried.

Why It Mattered

Southwest's Companion Pass is the program's signature benefit, and earning it the conventional way takes effort. The standard threshold is 135,000 qualifying points or 100 qualifying one-way flights inside a single calendar year, with the pass then valid for the rest of that year and all of the following year. Spending and credit-card welcome bonuses count toward the qualifying-points total, but most people pace themselves into the pass over months of strategic activity.

The March 2026 offer collapsed that timeline. Meeting a $3,000 to $5,000 minimum-spend requirement is achievable for most household budgets within the standard three-month window, and the pass landed in the account once the bonus posted. For a couple who flies Southwest a handful of times a year, that's meaningful. The companion flies for $5.60 in taxes per one-way domestic ticket, on both cash fares and award redemptions, for the life of the pass. Three round trips together at $200 each per ticket nets roughly $1,200 in saved fares, more than enough to cover the annual fee on any of the three cards several times over.

The offer also arrived against the backdrop of Southwest's ongoing transition out of the open-seating, two-bags-fly-free era. With assigned seating rolling out across the fleet through 2026 and a new fare structure already in place, the airline has been working to keep loyalty members engaged. A Companion Pass-from-welcome-bonus offer is the most direct lever Southwest and Chase can pull to pull new co-brand applications.

What Readers Should Know Going Forward

The standing welcome bonuses on the Southwest personal cards have reset to their typical structure. Expect points-only welcome bonuses in the 50,000 to 75,000 range with a $1,000 to $3,000 spend requirement, depending on the card. The companion-pass-from-the-bonus offer is not a permanent fixture. Chase has run it sporadically since the original 2018 promotion, usually anchored to first-quarter travel-planning season.

If readers missed this round, the practical playbook is this. The historical pattern suggests another similar promotion is likely in the next 12 to 18 months, often in the January-through-March window when Chase pushes Southwest applications hardest. Sign up for Southwest's email list and Chase's card-offer notifications so the next iteration shows up in inboxes rather than relying on third-party coverage. Until then, the conventional Companion Pass route, earning 135,000 qualifying points across cash purchases, credit-card welcome bonuses, and partner activity in a single calendar year, remains available.

For readers who want a Southwest co-brand right now without waiting, the Southwest Premier is the middle-of-the-road pick most travelers should default to: 3x points on Southwest purchases, 6,000 anniversary points, and a $149 annual fee that breaks even on roughly one round trip's worth of points earnings. The Southwest Priority makes sense for readers who fly Southwest more than four or five times a year, given its $75 annual travel credit, four upgraded boarding positions, and 7,500 anniversary points. The Southwest Performance Business is the call if a small business is footing the bill, since business-card welcome bonuses don't count against the 5/24 rule and can stack with a personal Southwest card.

Small-business owners with a side LLC or a sole proprietorship should also know that Chase has historically run Companion-Pass-from-welcome-bonus promotions on the Southwest Performance Business and Premier Business cards on a separate cadence from the personal-card promotions. Watching both tracks doubles the odds of catching one.

The Takeaway

The March 2026 promotion was a clean, easy on-ramp to one of the better recurring benefits in U.S. domestic travel, and readers who caught it are now sitting on a Companion Pass valid through February 2027. Readers who missed it have the standard welcome-bonus offers to evaluate in the meantime and a reasonable expectation that Chase will rerun a similar promotion in early 2027. The Companion Pass mechanics themselves haven't changed, and the math on a card-anchored route to the pass continues to favor anyone who flies Southwest with a regular companion at least a couple of times a year.

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