You might be surprised that I’m writing about this change in the churning world, because it feels like the kind of thing I’d sarcastically reference the big blogs talking about. But to me, this change is one obvious example of how much the weird, strange fun that has always been part of this hobby is being killed.
I’m of course talking about the changes that Southwest made to status, which includes gating Companion Pass behind status. Companion Pass is still very much alive, but must be earned by actual TQPs or flights in a year vs. miles earned (primarily via SUB, of course) like it was in the past.
That’s really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. If I’m understanding the email correctly, all you need to do is spend $140k on a Southwest card to get there. If you’re reading this, that’s not all that daunting of an ask – it’s really more about whether you want to do that vs. spending elsewhere.
But it effectively kills the accessibility for the average churner that isn’t trying to make this a big part of their life – just take more trips than they would be able to normally. Again, if you’re reading this, you’ve leveled up beyond that point. But there was once a time where many of us would be crushed by this news.
When I first got into the hobby in 2016, the Companion Pass was the crown jewel of /r/churning. If you timed your applications and met the SUB spend perfectly, you could earn six figures of WN miles + ~2 years of Companion Pass for an extremely low spend requirement – generally $6k.
At the time, I lived in a city with a smaller regional airport. It wasn’t a WN hub, but it wasn’t a hub for any airline, and it was only a ~45 minute flight from 3 different WN hubs. P2 and I used the Companion Pass constantly over those two years. We flew to almost every international destination WN offered and frequently went on weekend trips for sporting events or concerts on complete whims.
I know very few of us are excited about the prospect of the Companion Pass nowadays (or even flying WN in general), but it’s worth reflecting back on what it used to mean.
2 years of using what is essentially a buy one, get one free coupon on all flights and the house money to take a ton of trips in return for modest organic spend that most could meet is a humongous benefit to the vast majority of people out there.
Maybe I’m an old man yelling at the clouds at this point, but it makes me think of all the things we’ve lost that made this hobby truly fun in a way that it can’t really be at the critical mass size it’s reached.
It’s great that there are tools out there for everything – automated award alerts, spend tracking, etc. etc. But it bums me out that nobody is ever going to go down the rabbit hole that is trying to price out a theoretical ANA RTW on Great Circle Mapper anymore. You could easily just ask your favorite LLM to do it for you, but it doesn’t matter, because ANA doesn’t offer them anymore.
Pictured: a direct hit of nostalgia
Making money on MS loops is great, but twiddling your thumbs waiting for the wire to hit and the deposit to clear just isn’t fun for me in the same way that weird stuff like GC Mapper was.
And with all the anti-gaming action being taken against even low/mid level churning, it feels like there’s not much meat left on the bone for people in the middle of the bell curve of this hobby.
The hobby is simultaneously becoming more boring for the advanced folks while also becoming less accessible at a lower level, and that doesn’t feel like a net positive.
As someone that remains able to extract value from the hobby to the point that I don’t need SW points or a companion pass, it feels really weird to be spending this much time thinking about things that are frankly inconsequential at this level.
But I can’t help feeling nostalgic and a little bummed thinking that the quasi-loophole that was my first big win 10 years ago isn’t going to be open for newcomers in the future.
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and if you’re going to be in Chicago this weekend, have a Malört shot for me.
Tos!