Best of 2014 #6-10: Southwest Companion Pass, tricks on family boarding, IHG promo codes and 80k card, and free BA stopovers

With 2014 coming to a close, we also are coming up on the 1 year anniversary of Points With a Crew, which started in January of this year.  It’s been a great year and I could not be more excited about the future as we look into 2015 and beyond.

Looking back at the top posts of 2014, I thought I’d run a short series of the top posts of 2014 at Points With a Crew.  These more or less are the most visited posts by blog visitors in 2014, and are pretty highly correlated with a list of my most popular posts.  Things are slightly skewed by the posts that ran in the week in September that I was featured on the main page of Boarding Area, where I got a ton more traffic.

So, here we are with posts #6-10 in the Top PWaC Posts of 2014:

#10 – We’ve been flying quite a bit on Southwest Airlines in 2014.  We used 170,000 Rapid Rewards points to take our family of 8 to a reunion in Lake Tahoe this summer, and since I earned the Southwest Companion Pass, Carolyn flies free any time I go, so it’s been our go-to airline when we’re doing a getaway.  #10 on the list is Tips and Tricks on how family boarding works on Southwest – where you board and how to maximize your chances of sitting together.

#9 – IHG hotels has long had a list of promotion codes that they target to particular accounts, such as 2000 points for 1 night’s stay, or 5000 points if you stay 2 nights.  It has been possible to combine these promo codes and get as many as 20,000+ points for a single night’s stay!  Many people are searching for a list of promo codes, but they instead find my cautionary tale on why you may not want to sign up for a ton of promo codes (there have been reports of IHG banning accounts that sign up for promo codes they weren’t approved for.

#8 – For much of 2014, there has been a public offer for a credit card that gives 60,000 IHG points as a signup bonus.  There is also a “secret” 80,000 point offer that you can sign up for, though currently there’s actually an even better IHG credit card offer.  This is one of the better cards out there to hold, as with each anniversary and payment of an annual fee of $49, you get 1 free night at ANY IHG hotel.  If you play the travel hacking game in “2 player” mode, I suggest you both get this card at about the same time.

#7 – Because British Airways has a distance-based award chart that treats each segment as a different award, you can get a free stopover, even on a one-way journey.  If you’re transiting London on BA, you even actually are not charged any additional Avios for going to/from a separate British city!  (SEE ALSO: Stopover, layover, open-jaw? What are they and what’s the difference?)

#6 – Another post about Southwest!  Most people get the Southwest Companion Pass by signing up for 2 of the 50,000 mile credit card offers that seem to come and go.  But if you need the Companion Pass now, and those 50,000 mile cards are not available, or if you can’t get them (because you were denied, or have already received the bonuses), I take a look at the cheapest way to get the Southwest Companion Pass WITHOUT credit cards.

How’s that grab ya?  Like a barbed-wire girdle?  Go back to Top 20 #16-20 (19x miles reselling at Sears, BA with low fees, destroying metal cards, Singapore sweet spots and don’t poop where you eat), Top 20 #11-15 (Why I “shouldn’t have children”, Beginner’s Guide, longest airline routes for the cheapest, and Into the Nights), or tune in next time for Points With a Crew Top 20 of 2014 #1-5!

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