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Family Travel Unpacked: Make the Most of Travel With Kids
Family Travel Unpacked is a family travel podcast for parents who want to travel with kids more easily, confidently, and joyfully. Hosted by Melissa from The Family Voyage, each episode breaks down real-life family travel strategies, smart planning tips, and destination inspiration so travel with kids actually feels doable.
From packing hacks and family vacation planning to hotel tips, points and award travel for families, and travel mistakes to avoid, you’ll laugh, learn, and walk away ready to plan your next stress-free family trip.
Family Travel Unpacked: Make the Most of Travel With Kids
Southwest Companion Pass 2026: My Secret to Budget Travel with Kids
Southwest Companion Pass 2026 lets you fly your kids for $5.60 on every flight! Learn how to earn 135,000 points fast with credit card bonuses.
Melissa breaks down everything you need to know about earning the Southwest Companion Pass in 2026 - the ultimate family travel hack that lets you bring a companion on every Southwest flight for just $5.60 in taxes. Despite Southwest's recent changes, the Companion Pass remains one of the best travel rewards for families who want to travel more without breaking the budget.
In this Quick Tip Tuesday episode, you'll learn exactly how to earn your Companion Pass using two Southwest credit cards, why January 2026 is the perfect time to start, and how this travel hack has enabled our family of four to take trips to Hawaii, Costa Rica, and countless weekend getaways we couldn't otherwise afford.
Episode Highlights:
- What the Southwest Companion Pass is and how it works
- Step-by-step credit card strategy to earn 136,000+ qualifying points
- Real examples: Hawaii, Costa Rica and more family trips for just taxes
- Southwest's 2025 changes
- Perfect combination of Southwest credit cards
- Total cost analysis: $400 in fees for $1500+ in travel value
00:00 Welcome to Quick Tip Tuesday
00:26 Introducing the Southwest Companion Pass
01:02 What is the Southwest Companion Pass?
02:29 How to Earn the Companion Pass
02:52 Credit Card Strategies for Earning Points
05:10 Why Now is the Best Time to Get the Companion Pass
06:54 Conclusion and Additional Resources
Compare Southwest credit cards here*
*This is a referral link. When you apply for a credit card through this link, I may earn a commission or bonus at no cost to you. This helps support the free content on this site. I only recommend products and services I personally use and believe will benefit families traveling with kids.
Don't miss this inspiring, practical travel with kids podcast hosted by family travel expert Melissa Conn, founder of The Family Voyage, certified Child Passenger Safety Technician, and mom of two who proves family travel is achievable for everyone.
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Hey there and welcome back to Family Travel Unpacked. I'm your host Melissa, and you're listening to Quick Tip Tuesday. In case you're new here, you can find tons of detailed destination guides, travel tips, hacks, and more on my website, thefamilyvoyage.com. First off, I wanna wish you all a very happy New year. I had a nice long break with our extended family, which is why you haven't heard from me in a while, and I can't wait to tell you all about the cruise we just took over the next few weeks. But in the meantime, I wanna share some brief thoughts about my favorite family travel hack: the Southwest Companion Pass. Since I keep these Tuesday episodes to just five or 10 minutes, I won't go into every single detail. You can dive deeper at thefamilyvoyage.com/companion. For now, I'm gonna share a quick overview of what the Companion Pass is, how to earn it, why this is the best time to get it, and also why I'm talking about it right now at the beginning of January 2026. I addressed this a little bit in episode seven, which is a great companion to this one, so be sure to listen to that if you haven't already. First off, what is the Southwest Companion Pass anyway? It's not a traditional airline status. Those are called a-list and a-list preferred, and I honestly don't care about them at all. Instead, the companion passes a benefit you can earn that allows you to take another passenger with you every single time you fly Southwest for only the mandatory government fees. For domestic flights in the US, it'll cost you just$5.60 each way to take your companion wherever you go. And for international flights, it could be more like a hundred to$150 round trip. There are no blackout dates and you can use the companion pass as many times as you like, as long as there's a seat available to book. It also doesn't matter how you book your own ticket. Usually we get our on points, so we're just paying those mandatory fees for the adults too. The great thing is that once you run the companion pass, you keep it for the rest of that year and all of the next year. So if you earn it right now in January of 2026, you can keep flying your kid with you for$5.60 all the way until December 31st, 2027. It's an incredible value. My husband and I have each had our companion passes for a few years now, and they've been a total game changer for our family of four. We've used them to take the kids to Hawaii twice, to Costa Rica on a bunch of trips back to LA, more Florida trips than I can count, plus weekend getaways we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. We even used it last night coming back from our cruise. Honestly, it's one of those things that sounds too good to be true, but it's a hundred percent real. I'm sure your next question is how you can get your own companion pass. It's pretty simple, but it's not totally free. Basically, you need to earn 135,000 companion pass qualifying points in a single calendar year. Those are a little different than the standard points you redeem for flights. I have all the details over on my website at thefamilyvoyage.com/companion, but I'll give you a quick summary here too. The easiest way to earn a big chunk of those companion pass qualifying points is through a credit card welcome offer. Southwest and Chase have partnered to offer an entire portfolio of credit cards, and you'll wanna get one business card and one personal card in order to earn the companion pass quickly. You will want to space out your applications for the business and personal cards by at least a few weeks, but ideally closer to a month. Right now you can pop down to the show notes and click on my Southwest credit card referral link. If you're on a computer, go all the way to the right side of that page, and if you're on a phone, click the menu button in the top right corner. You'll see a list of five different cards. First, click over to the Performance Business Credit card. It's the most expensive card in the lineup, but it gives you almost all of the points you need to earn a companion pass. Now, the reason I said before that I don't care about a-list status with Southwest is that having the performance business credit card gives you almost all of the same benefits, but without having to fly a ton to get them. You'll get free checked baggage, preferred seats at the time of booking, the potential to upgrade to extra legroom seats plus anniversary bonus points. Right now you'll earn 80,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points and companion pass qualifying points after you spend$5,000 in the first three months. Plus, you'll get a boost of 10,000 companion pass qualifying points just for holding any Southwest credit card. So out of the 135,000 that you need, this one card puts you at 90,000. You're almost there! Once you're part of the way to hitting that$5,000 spend, come back to my link and open the very first card you see called the plus card. That's the cheapest Southwest credit card you can get. It'll give you another 50,000 points once you put$1,000 in spend on it in the first three months. As soon as the points from both cards post to your Southwest account, you'll have a companion pass that you can start using right away. The total cost to earn the companion pass this way is just under$400. I know that sounds steep, but keep in mind that you aren't trading in your points for the pass. You'll still have at least 136,000 points to spend on your own travel once you factor in those welcome offers, plus the$6,000 in spend you've done. Those points are gonna be worth at least$1,500, even if you never bring a companion with you. But if you fly with a companion every time like I do, it's more like$3,000 in value from that$400 spend. Okay, so why am I talking about the Companion Pass right now at the beginning of January 2026? To be honest, I've been wanting to share more on this podcast about the Companion Pass for the last few months, but I've been really nervous. In case you missed it, over the last year Southwest's Management has made a huge set of changes at the airline all because of a private equity firm that's trying to squeeze profits from the company, even at the expense of losing what's made it unique and beloved by many travelers. Those changes have included getting rid of open seating, which I'll admit some people love and some people hate charging for checked baggage, switching back to putting an expiration date on flight credits, destroying earnings on paid basic fares and making point redemption values much more variable than they were before. In short, a lot of the reasons it was compelling to fly Southwest before just aren't there anymore. After seeing one negative announcement after another, I was really convinced that destroying the companion pass would be the final nail in the coffin and that I would never fly, talk about or recommend Southwest again. But we can all breathe the sigh of relief, at least for now. Because the calendar's flipped and the 2026 companion pass qualification page on Southwest website doesn't show any real changes from 2025. The last year has been pretty rough on Southwest travelers like me. I really don't like the new changes, and I feel like the airline has lost a lot of its soul, but I'm also a realist and a budget-minded mom. I live in a market where about a third of the flights are operated by Southwest, and the fact that the companion pass lives on for at least another year or two means I can't afford to be picky if our family wants to keep traveling as much as we do now. It is possible that a year from now the board and its activist investors will change their mind and kill the companion pass one way or another. But for now I'm gonna ride the wave and you might wanna ride it with me. That's it for today's Quick tip. If you wanna know more about how to save money on travel with kids, hop on over to thefamilyvoyage.com/freetravel, or check the links down in the show notes. I have tons of resources to help you articles, podcast episodes, even a free ebook. It's easy to get started and can be a total game changer for your family. Safe travels, everyone.