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Multiple gift cards for one reservation but multiple people

MentalMac
Explorer C

So,  I know you can only use 3 gift cards per person to book a flight. 

But,  what if I'm booking 3 people at one time? 

Does it mean I can only use 3 gift cards,  or can I use up to 9? I have looked online and in these discussion boards,  but there seems to be no answer. 

I have multiple gift cards in many different denominations that i have recieved as gifts over this past year that I want to use. 

Can anyone PLEASE give new a concrete answer? 

Thanks! 

4 REPLIES 4

Re: Multiple gift cards for one reservation but multiple people

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@MentalMac wrote:

So,  I know you can only use 3 gift cards per person to book a flight. 

But,  what if I'm booking 3 people at one time? 

Does it mean I can only use 3 gift cards,  or can I use up to 9? I have looked online and in these discussion boards,  but there seems to be no answer. 

I have multiple gift cards in many different denominations that i have recieved as gifts over this past year that I want to use. 

Can anyone PLEASE give new a concrete answer? 

Thanks! 


I think it is a limitation of the booking software, so the number of people is probably not a factor - you'll still only get three input boxes.

 

Hopefully someone else can confirm.

 

So step 1 - consider booking one-ways so that you can split up the $ value over two reservations and save some effort in trying to combine the gift cards. Maybe this solves some of your problem if you can use three gift cards for one direction and three gift cards for the return trip.

 

If not, in order to use more of the smaller gift cards you could use them to make bookings for one person at a time on a different trip, then cancel them to get travel funds, then use the travel funds to book the desired trip. You could do this over multiple iterations to combine gift cards and travel funds until you reach the $ needed for one person on one leg of the trip.

 

The travel funds have to be in the person's name that will be flying though, so you can't combine things into a different passenger's name and then cancel and use for a new passenger.  Make a table of which gift card will go to which person in advance.

 

This sounds very time consuming, so it may make sense not to book all the flyers together to skip a round of combining unless they must be all in one reservation?

 

Let us know if this makes sense.

 

 

 

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.

Re: Multiple gift cards for one reservation but multiple people

bec102896
Aviator A

Southwest only allows 3 forms of payment for each reservation regardless of how many people are on the reservation so the best thing to do would be book one way flights as suggested by @DancingDavidE.

 

The one way bookings will allow up to 3 payments per booking so if you had 9 gift cards you could use 3 on each booking  (unless the 3rd card on each reservation wouldn't cover the full cost of a reservation) then the 3rd payment method would have to be a credit card or PayPal.

 

Hope this helps

Blale 

Re: Multiple gift cards for one reservation but multiple people

ZevSupport
Frequent Flyer A

Super creative and helpful idea - love it! 


Community Champion | PHL based | ex-Companion Pass Holder | Southwest Passenger

Re: Multiple gift cards for one reservation but multiple people

chgoflyer
Aviator A

Southwest's gift card terms and conditions do say you can use up to 3 cards per passenger on each reservation, so in theory you should be able to use nine (or eight plus a credit card). I don't have any experience with this however, and I do know that difficult redeeming multiple Southwest gift cards is a common complaint we see frequently, so it's possible the wording in the terms and conditions is incorrect. If you have issues doing this online you might want to try calling to complete your booking. Alternately, as mentioned earlier you could split the booking up into multiple reservations. Good luck!

 

Southwest gift cards – A maximum of three Southwest gift cards can be applied per passenger on each reservation. If your purchase exceeds the amount available on the three Southwest gift cards, you will only be allowed to use two Southwest gift cards and another form of payment will be required for the difference.