I am in the same boat as you op. I have already acquired the Chase Sapphire Preferred card to use for our international airfare and plan to apply for the Starwood card to use for hotels abroad.

For domestic travel we plan to wait till this fall and apply for a couple of the Chase Southwest cards with the 50k bonus intending to qualify for a companion pass in early 2014. It sucks that they dont fly direct to Vegas from here but if its darn near free I can put up with it.

What do some of you more experienced members think about my plan to wait till fall to apply for the SW cards even though they are available with the bonus now? Am I doing the right thing by waiting to maximize the time the companion pass would be good for or should I just do it now?