12 flights for free!

Here is a quick way to get 12 free flights on Southwest.

This deal was borrowed from Flyertalk.com but summarized for your enjoyment.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747057

1. First, apply for the American Express Business Gold rewards card, first year free, with 25,000 bonus points.

(https://www201.americanexpress.com/sbsapply/EACQServlet?request_type=applyNow&bos=b&eep=20145&ct=24&lpid=263&&openria=0)

2. Then send your American Express points to Continental via their web site. Their 25,000 bonus points become 25,000 Continental miles.

(Create an account onlinehttp://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/onepass/default.aspx)

3. Then call Continental OnePass service center(713.952.1630) and transfer your Continental miles into 25,000 Amtrak Guest Reward points. (Create an account online http://www.amtrakguestrewards.com/) (This transfer appears to take place on Monday morning).

4. Now transfer your Amtrak Guest Rewards to Choice(http://www.amtrakguestrewards.com/index.cfm?loc=rewards_selection.cfm&category=redeem&rewards=Hotels) at a 5 to 1 ratio. Your 25,000 Amtrak become 125,000 Choice hotel points. You can do this step online. (Create this account online here:

http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-US/html/FrequencyPrograms?promo=gch031&kw=gnch031&s_semid=%7Bifcontent:ContentNetwork%7D%7Bifsearch:%7Bkeyword%7D%7D%7C%7Bcreative%7D)

Finally, redeem your Choice points for Southwest points at a rate of 2 southwest points per 5000 choice points.(http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-US/html/GPAirlineRewards?sid=zISWg.4jtGdg$y7g.3)

Now you have 50 rapid reward points. You can do this step online off the main page for Choice Rewards Account. Amtrak only lets you transfer 25,000 points a year so you have to wait until January for the next step.

In January, apply for a Continental credit card (http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/onepass/earn/creditcard.aspx) and a Southwest Visa (16 RR points). After transferring your Continental points through the method above you will have another 40 Rapid Reward points. Combine this with 16 points from your Southwest Credit Card(http://www.firstusa.com/cgi-bin/webcgi/webserve.cgi?partner_dir_name=southwest_airlines_fly_e16&page=cont&mkid=6V8Rd)and you have a total of 106 Southwest Rapid Rewards points.

That is enough for almost 7 free flights - the bonus is Southwest has a deal where if you have 100 points coming in to your account in 12 months you get a free companion pass. So for all of your free 6 flights, you can take someone with you. Is this is a lot of work? Yes. Is it a little insane? Again, yes. But 12 flights from anywhere to anywhere Southwest flies is probably worth about $400 a flight or $4800. This scheme will probably take a couple hours of work to do so the value per hour seems worthwhile to me. You can also reduce the time and effort in this scheme by just buying, borrowing or earning Amex points.

For example, you can buy Amex points for $0.025/point so $200 will give you enough points for two free flights on Southwest. Or if you already have some Continental miles you can skip some of the steps above. Regardless, as a Rocket Stock Blog reader remember this – 12 free flights or $5 grand get you that much closer to retirement and that much closer to getting the man off your back.

-WageSlave