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Well the year is almost half over. I am pondering just what the real benefit is for A-list preferred over A-List. I am about 50% qualified. Does anyone have some thoughts and logic to share? thanks.
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There is also theoretical quantifiable benefit to the "Free inflight WiFi" if it worked as advertised.
Other quick thoughts. I think it's implied that you are considering other carriers, so it really depends on schedule convenience, your experience with Southwest versus the experience you'd get elsewhere, pricing, etc.
Customer | Home airport DCA
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Biggest benefit is definitely the bump in points earned per flight, they really add up fast with the A-List Preferred bonus.
--TheMiddleSeat
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@SWDigits wrote:
From a mathematical perspective the easiest benefit to quantify is the bump in the earning bonus from 25% to 100% on your qualifying flights.
There is also theoretical quantifiable benefit to the "Free inflight WiFi" if it worked as advertised.
Other quick thoughts. I think it's implied that you are considering other carriers, so it really depends on schedule convenience, your experience with Southwest versus the experience you'd get elsewhere, pricing, etc.
The free wifi was hard for me to put a number on - it would be convenient to have free access on multiple devices - but in the meantime I have many flights where I never buy it at all, or if I do for business travel then I would reimburse it anyway so it isn't an out of pocket reduction but it is still good to save the clients $8.
Side note suggestion - what if we could buy wifi in advance with our ticket for easier reimbursement purposes...
Anyway, back to the topic, I had a scenario two years ago where I was in range of preferred, but would have had to take some discretionary flights on my own to reach the higher level. I penciled it out at $0.02/point + wifi balanced against the out of pocket, and ended up not going after it.
However since I do fly Southwest whenever possible, I certainly would go for it on trips that I was going to take anyway - it's a bit academic as I don't shop the other guys very often anyway, or at least I rarely did when I had companion pass. Even now I'm in a mode where I want to get companion pass back, so unless the cost was far out of proportion I'd take the Southwest flight anyway.
My tip would be when you are getting close to consider taking a flight that you would otherwise make as WGA and upgrade it to BS to get the 12x points by incurring the additional incremental cost. The out of pocket to buy one or two BS fares at the end on your own will be much higher than incrementally upgrading a few flights that you'd be partially reimbursed for.
Or if you are able to reimburse a BS flight, then take one but it doesn't fit my usual guidelines to do that unless it was last minute travel and that's all that was available.