AirTran's A+ Rewards program ends after November 1. That gives you just a few days to make some important decisions about your points and credits.

Background

For newbies to Southwest, Rapid Rewards maintains two separate accounts for you: RR points and RR credits. Credits operate as they did in the pre-2011 Rapid Rewards program: When you accumulate 16 credits you automatically receive a Standard Award good for two capacity-controlled one-way trips anywhere Southwest flies. Standard Awards are typically not useful for trips planned far in advance, but they can save you a lot of money on short-notice trips. A Standard Award seat will be available if low fares would have been available on your flight but for their advance purchase restriction. You can get very lucky: I have even redeemed a Standard Award for the Monday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving on two days' notice.

Credit balances are viewable under "View My Old Credits and Awards" in the left column after logging in to My Southwest.

Under the old program many members' credits expired before they could accumulate 16. Those members got nothing from the old program. The new program gives you the option to use points to top off your 16 credits at any time. You can earn the points in many new ways, or you can just purchase them. The pruchase price for the full 16 credits ranges from about $375 to $500 depending on whether Southwest is running a promotion on points purchase. A last-minute trip normally costs more than $250 each way, so purchasing the points for a Standard Award can save you money.

However you can't purchase all 16 credits for a Standard Award. You need a "seed" of 0.25 credits minimum to activate the option to top off with points. That's why I am recommending planing that seed.

How to Plant Your Seed Credit

1. Create an AirTran account for yourself if you don't have one. Make sure the name and other information match your Southwest account exactly, because mismatches may block the necessary transfers until it's too late.

2. Login to your Southwest Rapid Rewards account. Click the My Rapid Rewards tab at the center near the top. Look near the bottom of the left column for "Transfer Between A+ Rewards and Rapid Rewards". Click that.

3. If you have credits in the AirTran program or credits (not points) in the Southwest program, skip to step 6.

4. If you have no credits in the AirTran program and no credits in the Southwest program, transfer 300 points, worth about $5, from Southwest to AirTran, where they become 0.25 credit. Then do another transfer to bring that credit back to Southwest. Logout of My Southwest and login again. Click "View My Old Credits and Awards" in the left column and you will see that you now have 0.25 credit expiring in 1 year, giving you the option to top off with points. You have a year to top off that award or not, and it only cost you $5 to create the option.

5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for all your family members. The $5 of points you invest now might save hundreds of dollars on a round trip in the next 2 years.

6. If you have some Southwest credits or AirTran credits, check their expiration dates. The object of this exercise is to create a long-duration option to top off. Early-expiring credits will shorten your option period. The best way to clean out early-expiring credits is to top them off the 16 and create a Standard Award. That award will be good for one year. Then don't forget to go back to step 3 and move 300 points to AirTran and back.

7. If you don't want to create a Standard Award and you have credits which will expire worthlessly, you should move all your credits to AirTran and leave them there. Some time after November 1 those credits will come back to Southwest as points, at 1200 points per credit. Your points will be good for two years from the last earning date in the Southwest program, not including points purchases. This is the first and presumably last opportunity to convert credits to points. I still recommend transferring 0.25 credit to Southwest before November 1 even though the result will be a shorter-term option to create a Standard Award. It's only $5.

8. If you have existing Standard Awards you can extend their expiration by transferring them to AirTran and back. This only works with an even number of one-way awards. Any odd number of one-way awards will leave you with 8 credits rather than a one-way award.

So doing this effectively allows you to buy your way (via 16 credits) into an award fare?

I don't see the advantage - is buying 16 credits cheaper than buying the required points to book the award fare with points?

I believe it depends...if you're close in looking at a flight that may have a high price (and thus requires a large amount of points) but has award availability, it could be a good use of this credit.

Do they still have a small RR signup bonus (like 500pts). Does it post immediately? That would help signup and seed other family members.

Are these awards tied to a specific name? That is, if family members seed and then generate award, can they be used for someone else?

[PS thanks for starting this informative post!]

From this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23727267-post23.html

Yes, anyone. However the family member is going to have to earn almost 19000 points on their own to earn an award. Given my cache of points, they almost never pay...

Same boat family/earnings wise BUT with the option to transfer points for a nominal fee, the opportunity to make a standard award in the future makes it a slam dunk in my book seed all the family accounts!

Thanks NSX! I hadn't thought about the family accounts.......

Some thoughts:

-- This assumes Southwest will allow the top-off & creation of Standard Awards for another year, which is considered likely, but not guaranteed.

-- By "$5" NSX means "approximately $5 worth of points value"; there is no actual cash charge involved.

-- Reports are that newly-created Standard Awards currently aren't showing up immediately, so be aware of this. (Seeder points transfers do seem to be showing up quickly.)

FYI: The fee for points transfers isn't really "nominal," it's $0.01 / point� meaning the transfer of a full 18,900 points to top off (if necessary) would cost $190 (transferred in an increment of 190,000).

You could transfer points from another account to make up the points.

I'm not sure I follow.

Southwest charges $0.01/point for all points transfers.

Yes that wasn't clear. I meant another program like UR, Hotels etc.

I just went through this.

Given this problem, instead of transferring 19,200 points over and 16 credits back, wouldn't it be better (safer) to transfer 300 points over and .25 credits back and then adding 18,900 points (within RR) to generate the Standard Award?
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1 active one-way Award Certificate and its EXPIRATION DATE...Mostly 7 (but a bit of 8) is worded at rewardsfurther.com as "Active one-way Award Certificates can be transferred for 8 A+ Rewards Credits. The expiration date of newly created A+ Rewards Credits will remain the same as the original expiration date on the Award/Certificate."

nsx's detail is, "Some time after November 1 those credits will come back to Southwest as points, at 1200 points per credit." I think this is a good prediction, but likely unofficial (of course).

I have 1 active one-way Award Certificate with September 2015 expiration. Dunno if or when I'll be going anywhere. I think I'll convert it to 8 AirTran credits and wait for November 1, but I suppose the risk is that they decide to transfer them back as credits (with that same September 2015 expiration). If that were to happen, it seems I'd by slapping an unnecessarily early expiration date on the remaining "points" needed to convert it to the 2 one-way certificates (cuz you can't just convert to a one-way).

I'm getting a headache LOL. Hmmm...